On the road to recovery

Well, I didn't get the GTS fixed this weekend, but I did get the transmission apart and found that the variator is worn out. This was a bit unexpected, as was the mess I found when I opened it up. First, the belt wasn't just shredded, it had completely disintegrated! Whereas before there were lots of rubber bits strewn about, this time I found little more than pieces of string wound around the variator and clutch, with bits of dust and fluff everywhere... wow! Once I removed the clutch and cleaned up most of the mess, I pulled the variator off to find that the weights had somehow become wedged between the pulley and the bell housing, and a few of them had even melted against the bell housing from the friction, when the belt let go! It took quite a bit of work to clean everything up and scrape the melted kevlar off the bell housing, but I managed to sort it out. However, I noticed that there was a lot of play in the brass bushing on the inside of the J Costa variator pulley - not a good sign. It looked to have close to 0.5mm of play, so I was concerned that this was too much for it to run reliably... if there's too much play, the pulley will wobble, producing excessive vibration and pressure on the sides of the belt, and before long the belt will fail. I suspect this was a contributing factor in why this belt failed, and possibly why the previous belt failed on the last day of the Cannonball.

The brass bushing in the inside of the J Costa variator is a rather special piece, which appears to have graphite inserts on the inside, in order to provide lubrication as the pulley spins on the shaft. I'm not sure whether J Costa makes a replacement bushing, but I hope so, because the rest of the variator appears to be in good shape. It would be a shame if they don't, because the rest of the variator still is in pretty good shape. Now if this variator just had a regular brass bushing in the center of the pulley, I could just have one machined and pressed in, which would be no big deal, but that's not going to cut it without some way to lubricate the surface between the pulley and the shaft. So for now, I'm just going to get a whole new variator, and see what I can do to get a new bushing and set of weights for the old one, so that I have a spare on hand in case I need it at some point.

Thankfully, Rich has a brand new J Costa variator that he's willing to give me tonight, which I'll replace with another new one as soon as I'm able to pick one up. So, hopefully I'll have the GTS back on the road and running great tonight! Then maybe tomorrow afternoon I'll be able to run down to Santa Cruz to pick up another one, a belt, and whatever other parts have arrived that I ordered. Wish me luck!