anyone ever replace their drive belt? where to buy in NA

just wondering if anyone had to replace their drivebelt… i wouldn’t mind having a spare around - incase one breaks.

only thing, in canada, i am not sure what fits and where to get one from… any suggestions?

Apparently … the only thing that kills a belt is cutting (vandalism) or kinking when off bike … which can break the slightly brittle kevlar reinforcements. Otherwise the belt will out last the pulleys … they do 50000 miles in a car engine

after only 3 months, mine snapped.
the clowns at YEAHBIKE were of no help to me.

long story short (literally), i contacted Ming cycles directly, and they sent a courier to pick up my snapped belt (i guess so they could examine/test it).

…and then a few weeks later (because the clowns at YEAHBIKE tried to swindle me…its a long story) i got a new belt, courtesy of Ming cycles (their customer service is great).

perhaps you can try contacting Areaware (they’ve been helpfult to me in the past) about the type of belt? or maybe even visitng auto shops/motorcycle shops and asking aroudn there? unfortunately, i never had the chance to do that when mine broke.

i hope yours never brakes! its such a bummer!

Didn’t someone in bikeforums dot net tell about how they broke theirs.

My English don’t remember the right words but as I remember.

Such belt is very strong lengthwise. They are good for ten thousands of miles
of service. But if one put force on them … lack word … opposite of length I
mean vertically or backwords making a U or a V then they break at the edge
when the U get over to form the V if you see it as a picture. Sorry confusing.

Such happens easily if one ask somebody to send a new or spare one and they package it not properly so it get a dent vertically in the weave.

Hope somebody get my crazy description. My very old microbike also use
a drive belt of same quality and it has lasted since 1989 or so. As long as one only stress it lengthwise they last almost forever. But break very easy if stressed the wrong way.

hmmmmmm interesting.
your description makes sense weakling.

and thanks for the insight; i’ll make sure no one ever pokes mine with their fat fingers!


“hey is that rubber?”
“no, it’s a kevlar belt”
“oh! so it’s bulletproof!”
“um yeah, something like that…”

Mine was a very poor description. Wish me not so lazy I could have search for it but I am a poor user of internal search. Me fail to find right seartch word.

Happy that you get my suggestion and I hope they are what the original poster meant with his text too.

If I ever find it again I try to get back here in thread with the proper quote.

hey guys, thanks for all the replies.

yeah, im actually just wanting to source a spare belt, so that in the event that mine breaks, then i won’t be stuck searching on the internet and calling places.

the belt teeth pitch is very common to timing belts for cars, but I just am not sure about number of teeth and width of the belt, compared to what is available in an auto parts store.

the belt SHOULD outlast the pulley’s but i have seen a handful of user experiences on the net that report broken belts, but they have a strida dealer near by - hence, not internet

The distributor for Canada is savedbybikes.com. Their customer service was terrific when I needed help with my Strida that was bought when yeahbike was around - a guy named Steve really fixed it up for me.

I met that guy Steve at his store and yeah he’s a pretty good fellow he seems to really believe in the product, he’ll be able to get anything for a strida that you need. He also gave one away for a prize at CP24 this august. The tv station made a week long contest for it, good advertising! hopefully more people ride this. So far I’ve only seen myself on this clown bike (north york area), fun though zipping along it with my daily 12km commutes.

My belt was cut in two today :frowning: (5.2 model, 8 months old, daily 10+ km commute)

Somehow, despite a tight snubber which left some noise due to me not being able to adjust it to the recommended 2.5 mm span after an 18" upgrade, the belt slightly slided off the freewheel.

I was just about to pull off at a green light and pedaled hard, and it immediately was cut through.

Due to an arrangement, I was in a hurry, why I tossed the belt in order to move as quickly as possible.

Tonight, when inspecting the bike as well as replacing the belt with the one from my wife’s 5.2, I couldn’t find anything strange.

New belt ordered from strida.co.uk, and I’m crossing my fingers for the commute tomorrow…

PS My wife isn’t using hers on a daily basis. I bought it for her for fun, and to use as a backup to avoid hiccups. Guess that came in handy today!

Don’t forget someone on the forums here also fitted a funky blue belt on their strida too from the autoparts store:

also you should try measuring the length and width of the belt and head to an autoparts store that will match those dimensions closely and has the same teeth pattern then you’re golden.

ah from this site:
tw.myblog.yahoo.com/Skywalker-St … &next=1917

here are the exact specs you should ask for in the autoparts store:

Belt length 1440mm
Teeth with tooth spacing 8mm
Belt width 13mm

the pics they show fit perfectly on the chainwheel.

Tried doing that in 2 auto parts stores and they all went “huh” and “what car is it for”. They didnt have a way to translate it from that size spec to a real belt.

Any case, I wound up calling the folks at areaware (the US distributor) and they got me a replacement quickly. Pretty easy to put on too.

Cut my second belt in two last Thursday :frowning:

Almost cut it ten days before that, and immediately ordered a new belt from strida.co.uk as well as a new frewheel just incase something’s wrong with that and got the spare parts last Friday.

Two belts cut in two in less than a year… What could be wrong?

Just mounted new freewheel and belt. Let’s see how that goes…

That sounds like something is wrong with the strida somewhere. overtensioned? or something sharp in one of the freewheel of chainwheel? I’ve basically ridden 2000km’s so far on my strida and did zero maintenance on the belt besides checking tension and hosing it off after riding in the rain to clean off the dirt. breaking a belt twice in a year would raise eyebrows there.

Agreed - there must be something wrong - Strida belts normally out last the bike… ie they dont wear out and have a tensile strength of 5000kg ! (50 x rider weight !), driving a car camshaft where the engine revs at average of 3000 revolutions per minute, and say average of 30 mph, they last 60,000 miles. It is usually the pulley teeth that wear out before the belt on a bike. On a bike that does a lowish average of say 70 rpm and 12mph that would mean a lot of miles ! (ie millions - I’m too slow to do the exact math now :smiley: )

From timing belt makers (eg gates etc. there are only 2 things that could make a timing belt break:

  1. Previous invisible damage to the internal kevlar / glass tension cords - ie if the belt has been pinched (tightly bent back on itself) at anytime, even before it was installed (even in storage or in the factory) or durring maintenance - (NB this is even more critical on the new carbondrive belts as carbon is even more brittle, and sensitive to pinching !).
  2. Something (or someone) has cut the belt - ie knife, sharp stone trapped in teeth etc.
    On a strida check for sharp teeth (moulding error ??) or a very tight snubber that makes each pulley tooth like a ‘guillotine’ as it passes the snubber - but this would feel really tight and horrible !

As said many times on this forum, the snubber bearing should not continuously touch the back of the belt - it should have a gap of about 0.25mm, …or… as close as possible, but only so it touches the belt occasionally eg on a high spot.

How to adjust the width of the snubber gap :wink:
[url]Adjusting belt tension? - #17 by Human_Amp]

Do not do these on the belt :exclamation: