Hi all,
While recently restoring my Douglas 2 3/4hp rear wheel (not a simple task as I am sure many of you already know!), I was trying to decide the best way to retain the original Douglas Belt rim to the spokes. I know that originally a small plate was used, with two screws, one either side of the spoke. My belt rim had two small holes for this purpose. However, while searching the web on the subject, I read an article of someone who had thought up a similar solution to this for his own belt drive wheel. It looked a good idea - so I thought it worth having a go for my bike.
These are small stainless steel fasteners, with a cylinder head cross drilled so they can feed through a 12 gauge spoke. on one end of the cylinder is a 2 BA threaded shaft that retains the belt rim. on the other side the cylinder is bored and threaded to take small stainless steel hex head grub screws.
Feed each retaining bolt onto the relevent spokes before starting the wheel building process, then once the wheel has been laced to the rim, the belt rim can be fed onto the 2 BA threaded ends and the nuts loosely placed. Then the belt rim can be centred, before finally tightening up the grub screws.
I found this worked well on the wheel I built - a couple of photos are shown below and on the listing, as well as instructions for use.
As with many other parts - as I had to write the programs to CNC manufacture these for my bike, I dediced to make them commercially in sets of 10 - hope they may be of use to you if you are restoring a belt rim wheel and have similar issue of how to retain it ahead.
If you want to purchase a set of these, ready to fit, then here is the listing on our RacingNorton website:
https://racingnorton.co.uk/epages/4c675e64-813f-4c0a-8926-87a680c962a0.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/4c675e64-813f-4c0a-8926-87a680c962a0/Products/%220803%20DG234_0015%22Best wishes
Paul Norman
www.RacingNorton.co.uk