I have done 50k km on my Silverwing 600. I am in the South of France it is Tmax country, they sold few Silverwings here until the 400 came out. I have not done any mods but use her for work, rest an play - touring Corsica on her was a joy. I have her serviced regularly but now more major work needs doing. I have been searching this forum in particular as it seems to have genuine enthusiasts and I need some help.

I have just had the belt changed and now standing starts I get the squeal also when taking a slow bend up hill. After long runs she is better but as I use her all the time the noise grates and it can not be doing any good. The garage tells me it is not glazing but wear on the variator and not to worry but I am not convinced.

After reading some posts here is seems the dr pully sliders are a good move for increased performance but would that counter the squeal?

And the j.costa variator has good performance but increases wear on the belt.

So my question is to counter the wear and squeal, do I change the sliders, change the variator or something else altogether like clutch.

As they do not sell many Silverwings here finding a garage with the experience in fixing and troubleshooting is not so easy.

Thanks in advance

Welcome Talesin, can't help you with the squeal problem or advice. We do have many techie minded folk who will be able to point you in the correct direction.

In the mean time, have a browse around, I'm sure a few of your questions will be answered somewhere.

Bonjour! Like Waspie, I can't specifically help you with any of your questions. I installed Dr. Pulley 24g sliders, but that was just an upgrade during the course of routine maintenance. I don't have any experience with the squeal, other than what I've read here on the forum.

I just wanted to say that France is absolutely beautiful. I watch the Tour de France every year, and the aerial footage is stunning! The race is a pretty good show as well.

Very much impressed with the riding that Thomas Voeckler is doing. Well done! I don't know that he can hold on through the Alps, but he's riding with the heart of a champion.

Welcome to the forums as well!

I would love to see The Tour live!

Bob

Hey "talesin",
Welcome to the site. I'm not one of the "guru's" but I searched this from one of JeffR's(site admin) posts to "The D":

This happens when the clutch gets glazed over, usually by slow stop and go traffic, or just always taking off from a stop really slow. To get rid of this you can hold in one of the brakes and rev it up to 4,000 rpms for about 4-5 seconds. You will get a slight burning smell but this will take away the squeal. My SWing is 4 years old and I do this a few times a year or so. It will also smooth it out too.

If you don't want to do this then just do some fast accelerations from a stop and don't take off slowly anymore. See if it works.

Hope this helps!

Bonjour, talesin. Comment ca vas? Yes - your mechanic is right that the squeal coming from the drive belt is common/normal at low speeds powering up gently. My bike doesn't do that much when the transmission is very cool or after long rides though the more I "take it easy" with the throttle, the faster the noise comes back.

Welcome to the forum and congrats on your new (to you) bike. Feel free to post questions or just hang out as much as you'd like.

KB

Ca va bien merci,

Thanks for all the input much appreciated - I have had the scooter from new. She was near to silent before changing the belt at 50k. I have had glazing in the past and burning it off worked - it is clean now so it must be wear. I will keep digging around for information on variator wear, problem is every time she squeals I grind my teeth. A new variator may be cheaper than dental bills.

Also not far from Italy the land of "Ciao Bella" very hard to keep up the image when you take off and the bike sounds like a bag of rusty ball bearings in a meat grinder.

Hi Terry,

Je n'ai pas dit que c'était une pièce du merde. When scanning the forums here I saw a thread stating there was more belt wear, if that was contradicted later on then I am sorry I did not see it. From scanning forums I understand the j.costa variator adds to the performance of the scooter X times and other mods have similar effects. The bike is my main form of transport and after 50k km it is going to have some wear so I will need to replace parts. My aim is to stop the squeal so I don't grind my teeth. I understand the Dr. Pulley sliding roller weight can reduce the revs for certain speeds therefore reduce fuel consumption which would be a huge bonus we are at 1.6 Euro a litre at the moment and it is only going up. I was going for (under advice) 28g - the additional weight may help reduce the slip. I need the casing off to understand this wear better.

If there is wear on the clutch I understand the Dr Pulley HiT clutch is an option worth considering, less slip less wasted power from the engine.

I am on the forum to benefit of others experience. As the bike gets older I will need to take more on board. I am a technician but a different discipline so I am just confirming there is a support infrastructure in place for any modifications I do . And I will feed back any results I get here as objectively as I can.

Thanks for all the input to date it all helps

Hi Talesin:

My advice to you is to set your #1 priority.
Is it reducing fuel consumption, increasing performance, or getting rid of the annoying squeal?

My suggestions would be:

1) To reduce fuel consumption, go to heavier sliders (28g) and possibly a new HIT clutch which you can tinker with to adjust engagement and lockup rpm.

2) To increase performance it's definitely a J. Costa, at the sacrifice of fuel economy. A positive side effect of the J. Costa is much improved engine smoothness and perhaps a reduction in squealing, hard to say.

3) To reduce or eliminate squealing is a harder call. No one is really sure what's causing your squealing. It could be the variator or clutch, or some combination of the two.

I would think with 50k km you are due for some replacement parts through normal wear and tear. If you don't mind the expense the first thing I would try is an HIT clutch. That will serve 2 purposes. It will enable you to custom adjust your engagement point (acceleration) and lock up point which will also affect fuel consumption. From there I'd look at either 26 or 28g sliders, depending on how much acceleration you want. If that doesn't do much, then the J. Costa would be my next choice.
This stuff all costs $. If you're on a budget the cheapest thing to start with are Dr. Pulley sliders.

Keep us informed. This is a very interesting topic.

And no, I was just kidding when I stated you thought the J. Costa was a piece of $hit.
Terry

I went to flight school in Norman back in '94... :-)

Just to wrap this up did a mod, installed Dr Pulley 28gr sliders and a Dr Pulley HiT Clutch. Different bike, no rattle, no squeal, smooth acceleration greater top speed just doing some fuel consumption figures and then will do a fresh post. Thanks for all the support been a journey but worth while.

Nope I used my garage that has been servicing the bike. I know I have just lost any street cred that I may of been building up but there you have it. The Clutch came with 12.5 kg Red clutch and 20 kg Pillow, we installed as is. For a bike that had a tired stock clutch it was a hell of a transformation. Much quicker acceleration and positive response, I had lost the "rattle" and "squeal". Problem - (apart from opening out the throttle at any opportune time, kind of addictive like a new toy) was that on take off there was a "heavy judder" that happened 2-3 times then full engagement also from cold there was an almost metallic "chink" as the clutch engaged initially. This was solved by putting in 12kg blue clutch springs - I also swapped out the pillow for the 12.5 kg red which in hindsight was a mistake. We lost the heavy judder but also the +ve engagement at the top end, it acted like the stock clutch used to with a little vibration on a hard take off. This was fixed buy putting the 20kg yellow pillow spring back. So all it will take is for Wales to win the rugby world cup and life would be perfect

It's too bad that it's such a PITA to make the subtle clutch spring changes. Any time an adjustment must be made, off must come the left passenger foot peg, the front and rear outer covers, the belt cover, and then the clutch itself. After doing it several times, it really doesn't take long, but it's still a PITA.
Thanks for your report.
I'll be seriously looking at an HiT clutch this winter.

I noticed the
Tour De France had a large presence of scooters helping control the race.
Good for them!

The mechanic was very impressed and if you mull it over conceptually it is a neat idea. The problem with a standard clutch spring is it will extent and engage once. The HiT Clutch gets around that by splitting the spring function in 2. A weaker spring to start with so it engages (problem no strong force) sooner and a heavier spring to follow to provide that strong grip force. By just using a heavier single spring the clutch would engage much later. I am not qualified enough or can I give enough quantifiable information and also I changed the the stock rollers for Pulley sliders at the same time so the results I have are a combined effect. There is a slight drop in revs for the speeds on the motorway, acceleration is much better and you can feel the constant engagement. I will post some fuel consumption figures over the next week or two. Would I recommend the HiT clutch even though the spring tuning is a PITA yes I would - even better if you have some one to do it for you. Putting the clutch on the first time took him 45 mins the pain being the main spring. Subsequent tuning was much faster as that did not need to be removed.

I didn't know you could tune the HiT clutch without removing it. That's a plus.
Thanks