Originally Posted by
PedalPink
Thanks for the nudge. We got busy last week and I hadn't contacted Gates. I did write them an email today with the inquiry. While on the website, I read this in their FAQ's:
"Normally tooth jump does not cause significant belt damage; however, strong riders who jump teeth at very high loads might consider replacing the belt. While this is very rare, these riders may need to set their belt tension above the standard recommendations to avoid this problem."
We've had our Belt jump several times, so I was a bit concerned to see the info in the manual saying you should replace the belt when it skips. So the answer to the FAQ is a little bit more reassuring.
Even properly tensioned, we can pretty much make it skip if we try to. Up a steep pitch, out of the saddle in a big gear, say 53/13 and it's likely to skip on our bike no matter how tight.
The skipping seems to be much more related to torque, than power, so we've just learned to stay out of gears where we are really grinding. In a sprint, where you're turning a higher cadence, it's never skipped, even putting out more watts, than the situations where it skips at a lower wattage, but also lower cadence.
As for signs the Belt's ready to fail, if the failure is the result of putting the Belt on correctly, there can be diaganol scoring in the teeth, (which we found after our belt broke) As for signs its going to fail because of wear, I haven't seen that.