This week, I noticed that the two power steering belts on the American RV were not in great condition, and in fact one of the belts had flipped itself over on the pulleys. The alternator drive belt also had a tooth missing from it.
Searching on the Rock Auto website in America where I buy a lot of the replacement mechanical parts, it was difficult to identify which belts I needed, as there were so many confusing options. Having measured the belts whilst still on the vehicle, with the exception of the power steering belts, the sizes of the belts fitted didn’t quite seem to match the sizes available online.
Given we have a trip away in the RV on June 10th, I didn’t want to take a chance ordering from America, as firstly the chances of the belts arriving in time to fit them was pretty low, Even if they did arrive on time, if one or more belts were the wrong size, we would not be able to get further belts in time.
I took to Google and found that RS Components sold v-tooth drive belts, In fact, that is an understatement as they seemed to have hundreds of options sizes available to order.
RS Components isn’t a place where you can put in your vehicle registration number and then magically be told which belts you need, but if you know the size of belts you need, there is every chance they have what you want in stock.
The next step was to remove all the belts from the RV and to very carefully measure the outside diameter of each of the belts, together with the width of each belt and the depth of the v for each v-wedge belt.
For this we used Samantha’s sewing box tape measure, which we stuck to the outer face of each belt using car body masking tape, at intervals around the belt. When we had the correct measurements, they were ordered online. All of the sizes we needed were easily found online using the filter tool available on the website.
The order was put in early evening and the order status said we were to have Next Day delivery. Despite it saying the delivery would be the next day, I doubted that would happen due to the time of evening the order was made.
I should not have doubted the service, a tracking number was issued early the next morning, and the delivery was onboarded to DHL, which arrived at our home before 2.00pm the next day – amazing service by all !
The cost was a little more than I would have paid at Rock Auto with the shipping from the USA, but I now have the belts in good time for our trip away on 10th June.
RS Components website, taking you to the v-wedge belt area: https://uk.rs-online.com/web/c/mechanical-power-transmission/belts-pulleys/v-wedge-belts/
Vintage RV Adventures 