What happens when snow or ice get wedged between belt and sprocket and there is no slack in the belt?
Must be a good idea to prevent that from happening!
I can imagine that I had snow and ice get into the pulleys and belt. I'm quite sure of it.
I've opened my panel on deep powder days and looked in there. LOTS of snow. The pulleys do maintain enough heat to keep powder melted off...but you know it comes in and hits it while it's running. It must.
It probably adds to the cooling feature. Can't hurt to keep that belt from overheating.
The powder gets pulverized when it's in there. (can you imagine getting your finger sucked in there when running at 25 or 30mph?)
I'd be silly to think ice didn't make it's way in there also.
My belt is in good shape. Visual inspection shows no damage or areas of concern.
My dealer actually inspected my sled this week. I'd hear from them if they thought something was up, too.
With this ice and snow in mind...I didn't take any chances and in about March, I installed the VE drop pan like shown above just for piece of mind.
But my main reason for installing it was because I also didn't want some rock or log coming up through the tub plastic and punching into my lower pulley.
