Just found this site and it rocks. I'm looking to upgrade utility quads from an 01 Rubicon. I've only owned Honda's but they have fallen behind in the features dept it seems so I'm looking at other manufactures also (650-750cc). I don't know anything about the belt drive trannies, seems Honda is the only one left w/o one. I know people that have all makes and models with the belts and they love them, but none plow snow with theirs. I plow up to 18" in MT with my Honda, over that I use the tractor. My road is a little over a mile, hilly and gravel. How do the belts hold up plowing? Am I worrying about nothing? I have been looking at the Polaris 700 with the Glacier II plow system. Your thoughts and opinons on the belt drive trannies (of all makes) and the Polaris system would be appreciated.

 

Put a Belt drive ATV in low range and it will plow all day while pulling a house. Its the same system they use on 170 hp 2 stroke sleds so ATVs really never come close to there limites.

 

how thick are these belts and what are the made of?

i have 3 gokarts with belt drives and i burn belts like crazy
my belts are about 1 inch thick im not really shure what they are made
of

 

The hardest thing on the belt, is getting going. Once underway, its not slipping.
Some belt drive cvt trannys use a centrifical clutch on the prmary pulley...and these types never slip the belt. The belt is always tight against the pulleys, and cant loosen. The centrifical clutch is so it can idle in gear, and provides a very smooth , progressive engagement. Basicly the same centrifical clutch you had on the front of the oil pump, on the rubicon. Suzuki, yamaha and a/c use this type of cvt arraingment, and I cant remember anyone ever burning up the belt on one of them. Swamping the cvt, will probably cause slipping, but youve got to get pretty extreme to swamp the tranny. If you do, just stop, open the drain valve at the bottom of the cvt, let the water out...then in nuetral, idle at elevated rpms(just high enough to engage the centrifical clutch about 1700 rpm), til the belt dries. Usually 1 minute, and its all dry, and ready to go.
Kawasaki and Polaris say right in the owners manual...if youre gonna be doing anything slow and working the quad (like plowing) to use low range, so the belt doesnt have to work so hard. Niether of these brands use a centrifical clutch, ...they use the snowmobile arraingment, where the primary pulley opens at idle, and lets the belt so slack. Thats why the starting out, is the wear prone time for the belt. It is staionary, and has to gab a spinning pulley, and transferr the power to the other pulley. Once underway,it wont slip unless it gets wet, or you are in high range, when you should be in low. If you drive it properly, and keep it adjusted right, the belts on Polaris will last a long time, but it is a wear item, just like brake shoes, and tires. Eventually itll wear out.

 

I have a 2006 Arctic Cat 400 FIS Auto the first day i brought i took it up a creek that goes to an earthen dam to a pretty good size lake , my brother was on an 86' Honda TRX350 Foreman 4x4 i sold him in nov. 2005 ; when we got to a deep part of the creek where we would alway's leave the creek bed and go around the bank then back into the creek to the old spillway !

My brother went around the bank as alway's , but i kept going up the creek the Cat was taller than the Foreman by a foot or more ; the water came up to the floor board's on the Cat but there was a hole that i had taken the Foreman through before .

But this time my brother started to go around the hole , i ask him why he was going around it this time ; and he told me it was deeper than it was the last time we went through it but i desided to go on through !

When my front wheel's hit the hole the water came up to the bottom of my headlight's , i was already half way so i just hit the throddle and went on through ; it wasn't a long swim the hole was only about 10 feet or so but i did worry a little about getting water in the belt housing but i didn't feel any slipping of the belt .

When we came back i went through it again and still no belt slippage , so the next day i called my Dealer and ask her how deep is to deep for the Cat ; and she told me the snorkle's were high under the plastic's right under to handle bar mount !

She told me what to do if i took on water to remove the plug just like hondabuster said , and she also told me if i got water sucked into the belt housing i would have it in the air intake for the carb ; because they were the same hight .

I can't tell you about snow plowing because we hardly ever get snow where i live , but hondabuster is right about using low gear when plowing or towing a heavy trailor or car ; the last and biggest snow storm to hit our area was the Blizzard of 93' !

My Mom is 75 yrs. old and she told me it was the worst she had ever seen , and she pray's she never see's another one like it for the rest of her life ; the worst part for me was the power and water outage but we were luckier that most out power was back on in three day's where street's north , south , east and west of us were with out power 2 week's to over a month .

We had a chemical co. and 2 carpet mill's on our street , so that's why we got our power and water on while everyone around us suffered longer ; big business that we use to hate to see them come to our street ! ........

 

We have two Grizzly 700s; one of them is my wife's, and has 27" tires; the other is mine, and has 25" tires. We bought hers in August of 2006, and mine in August of 2007. Mine now has two hundred more miles on it than hers, despite hers having 26 more hours on the engine clock. The difference in average speed these two Grizzlys are used at is primarily because we bought a snow plow for hers when we bought it, and all winter long it plows snow for a living, while my Grizzly still gets to go play. Last year we had a lot of snow, with four feet in a two week period of time, then several more storms throughout the year. On the first big storm we had 18" of heavy snow, and my wife thought it would be fun to go plow snow with her new Grizzly 700. She ended up plowing every single driveway on the block, and spent the better part of a day plowing snow with her Grizzly. Too bad she spent the whole dang day in HIGH RANGE! The first thing I asked her when I got home from work was if she had remembered to use low range; and she said something along the lines of "what's low range for?" Anyway, the Grizzly 700s belt drive transmission survived just fine, and is still going strong plowing snow this winter. And maybe my wife will even remember there is a low range this year.

DV

 

My buddies who have belt drives are in and out of low range a hundred times a day! At the bottom of big hills, they have to stop and hold the whole group up while they do their thing....gets real old after a while.

It's a limitation inherent in the design. A belt drive (by itself) can only achieve a limited range of transmission "ratios" (dependent on the sizes of the pullies), and beyond that they need a sub transmission to extend the range.

Personally, I just prefer a good old manual trans with a low 1st gear.

 

Your grizzly didnt get hurt a bit, by being in high range for plowing. The design of the belt drive doesnt allow slipage, unless its wet. Using low range is optional on yamahas and suzukis. Its only if you want to. The only thing which might wear out prematurly, is the centrifical clutch, but the belt wont slip. Its totally different from snowmobiles and polaris.

 

I use my 325 Trail Boss with a 52" blade to plow with ,never burned a belt with it ,and it doesn't have low range .

 

<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: reconranger

My buddies who have belt drives are in and out of low range a hundred times a day! At the bottom of big hills, they have to stop and hold the whole group up while they do their thing....gets real old after a while.



It's a limitation inherent in the design. A belt drive (by itself) can only achieve a limited range of transmission "ratios" (dependent on the sizes of the pullies), and beyond that they need a sub transmission to extend the range.



Personally, I just prefer a good old manual trans with a low 1st gear.</end quote></div>


Maybe I just get lazyer as I get older but I used to ride a Honda 3-wheeler. I'd get tired of riding it after about 1 hour because my foot was constantly shifting that thing (and it beat the hell out of me). If I have to stop on an unusually steep hill to put my Grizzly in low range for the descent, so be it.

Now if I lived near some sand dunes, a sport quad with a 5-speed manual would be the ticket. However, since I don't, give me the automatic any day. Riding all day in the forested mountains offers continually varying terrain - terrain best suited for a CVT automatic. ;-)