CVT working Ok, but not as well as earlier, performance deteriorated for some reason. Originally, CVT would increase revs to approx 8000 whenever I gave it WOT to climb a hill, ran into a strong headwind, or both. Now, it will only rev engine to a little over 7000 at WOT when I need to re-accelerate. My performance going up hills and into headwind has definitely fallen off. Dead starts are great, actually maybe a little too many revs from dead start, but excellent take-off.
I think I am suffering from the dreaded dog leg in the OEM torque driver. The angle is not steep enough at low speeds, so revs a little too much at low speeds, and at high speeds the angle is too steep, so when the torque driver makes the transition, revs drop off too much. As I understand it, the angle is measured with 90 degrees being perpendicular to the pulley and 0 degrees being parallel to the pulley. The higher angle moves the pulley out faster, drops revs faster. I have Malossi torque driver 618317 for Kymco 49cc engines, that has the straight cut grooves with 2 different angles to try, but haven't been able to figure out how to install it, i.e. it doesn't appear to fit, without modification/ machining. I would love to get it installed, think it would be great for CVT tuning.
So, I disassembled CVT today to see what's wrong if anything. I was very careful taking off variator to see if Dr Pulley sliders had flipped, but looked OK. I did notice appeared to be binding a little on variator ramp, but otherwise looked in great shape. I think maybe my problem is a little binding between the variator ramp and the sliders?
Everything looked OK, so I swapped out the Malossi Green torque spring for the next stiffer one, Purple. Then I cleaned the variator and applied just a touch of grease to the variator ramp area, and put it all back together. This is the 1st time I have applied a little grease to the slider area, but have seen it recommended before. I probably should have just greased the slider and put it back the way it was, but seemed like too much trouble for a small change. Depending on how it goes, I may try 7g sliders, and put the green torque spring back next.
Tomorrow I hope to take a long ride to test and report will back. Cheers