[Hallicrafters] SX-88 Belt

[Roy Morgan]

SX-88 folks,

As a followup, I have found my files that may be of interest:
The Notes file on the SX-88
My notes on the geardtrain rebuild.
A list of owners of SX-88’s from 2007

I can send these to anyone interested.  The geartrain file has hints on how to get the anti-backlash gears set up right.  And the notes file has various topics from mailing lists of the time.  It does include this about the belts.  This I sent in 2008, but I heard the story much earlier than that I believe.

"The belts are a serious problem.  Did you hear the story?  Someone with a couple of SX-88's, LOTS of money and some time on his hands went on a crusade to get new belts made for these things.  He found out who'd made the original ones for Hallicrafters and called them up.  (It was the most well known company and they are making timing belts still.) Finally got an old timer on the line who really did knew what he was talking about. The quote was:  "Oh yes.  Those were special order items.  We had to make a new mold to manufacture them.. I'd love to help you out, but we trashed that mold along with a bunch of others about two years ago.  It would cost about (X) thousands of dollars to make a new one.””

Roy


> On Oct 12, 2019, at 12:38 PM, NA NA <lrlayton at cox.net> wrote:
> 
> Gary, here is some information that I copied from somewhere when I had my SX-88.
> 
> "I just measured an original SX-88 bandswitch belt. It is possible the length has changed slightly over the years unless the tooth pitch was not an even number. Carefully measuring along the outside surface of the belt I get 27.5" The belt width is 1/8" (.125) and the tooth count is 112. It looks like about 4 teeth per inch."
> 
> Les Layton
> 
> 
>> On October 11, 2019 at 9:42 PM "Gary H. Harmon, Jr." <gharmon at idworld.net> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> I would like to help find a replacement belt.  Does anyone have a broken
>> belt I could borrow to use as a sample of the width, length and number of
>> teeth?  I may not be successful but I will try and I will return the broken
>> belt.  I do not have a SX-88 anymore but I like to research these kinds of
>> issues.

Roy Morgan
K1LKY since 1958
k1lky68 at gmail.com