[ds968]

I was at the local P dealer today and saw tne $ 5,000 ( roughly..) Porsche BICYCLE on display. Funny, the very first thing I noticed was the gear " CHAIN " which is actually a BELT made of some plastic / rubber compound. Seriously Porsche ?! Did you hire the retired 968 engineering team to once again build an overly expensive mode of transportation and save a couple of dollars by putting a failure-prone belt where a chain should be ?! LOL, at least when this one breaks you just fall off and might scrape a knee, spending 20 cents on a band aid..as opposed to $ 6,000 on a valve replacement job ..

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[Inkedupfatboy]

They told me Harley the belts were good for 100,000 miles. I had one break at 14K. $700 bucks later I was riding. I had not ridden the bike but twice with less than 150 miles on bike and had to drop the bike to avoid getting hit when some lady cut me off. I was at a dead stop. It does $1100 bucks in damage just dropping it. 6 months at the shop waiting for parts, I drive the bike into my trailer and drive home. Pull the bike out of the trailer 15 minues later, bike won't go into gear. Back on trailer back to the shop. Pull bike out of trailer - belt broken. Mechanic guy says "You must have caught a rock". I said in 8 feet in your driveway? He said "I will take care of you since you just had it done" - $630 later new belt. Yea, you took care of me alright.



I said, "Please come out and take a real good look at this bike."...so he does.. then says "what's up" I said "I just wanted you to get a real good look at it because you will never see it again. We're done."



Belts - yea the only one I really trust is the one that holds up my pants.

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[craigawoodman]

Linkedup,



I had my VRod for almost 2 years and did 22,000km with no belt problems. The new Fat Boy low has 3,000km on it with no problems. If the rubber belt is aligned and is only transferring drive, there should be no problems.



Something sounds seriously amiss with what happened to you. Considering that a new Harley in the USA is around $12k, charging $700 for a belt seems wildly over the top.



We're both drive gears free of burrs etc?



I actually like not having to line the chain and having crap go everywhere.

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[Inkedupfatboy]

I don't know - I have not had anyone else check the bike after he did either belt as I trusted him. The bike was bought new in 2004 and only has 14K on it so I was really surprised that it broke the first time - never mind twice. I have a friend who has had a bike shop in PA for 30 years and he looked up the belt and they are under $150 bucks - that was one reason I won't go back to this dude again.

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