356 fanbelts

Posted by su8overdrive On 2013/3/14 15:06:05

Over the years, fellow 356 owners and i've used some or all of the following with complete success: Gates 665, Gates 676, Goodyear 5373, Dayco 831X, Dayco 5373.

My '47 Super Clipper has a cogged Gates belt with a green stripe around the middle of the outside circumference, can't see a model #.
I've run it for years, a-ok.

However, after replacing my water pump pulley with a virgin spare which i first sanded, painted and baked (old trick, 180 degrees or so in the oven for 10-15 minutes makes painted items vastly tougher), i'm
getting belt noise.

(My existing water pump pulley had a harmless fingernail chip on the firewall side which harmed nothing but y'all know how these cars can bring out your inner Adrian Monk. That, and i decided to strip, buff and clear coat the factory steel fan blades so they'd look aluminum like the older Packard engines. Strictly a cosmetic thing i like, had the new pulley and fan balanced at the machine shop.)

I can soap the belt, another old trick,
but i'm thinking i should use my NOS Gates smooth belt (non-cogged) for the hell of it.

Are we right that in the day, all these fanbelts were smooth, and the cogged belts came later, much later, aftermarket?

And, what was the rationale behind a cogged belt? Cooling? Hard to fathom that, because the cogged portion is only the inner, bottom of the fan belt, which doesn't contact the trough of the pulley.

Finally, anyone ever hearing of a 356 fanbelt wearing out, let alone breaking? Stoutest fanbelts we've ever seen. A friend who still uses a '37 Caterpillar to fireguard his property twice a year says the Packard 356 engine fanbelt's stouter than the one in his Cat. It's
over half again thicker than the ones in friends' '41 Cadillac-ack-ack-ack-ack-ack-ack-acks.

Any insight into all the above?