Just discovered Gates do an app for belt tension! It's called Gates Carbon Drive and it's enormously better at picking up the dull thunk of a plucked belt than the guitar tuning app I used when I did my belts. No more sore thumbs - yay! The app is easier to find if you search for "Gates Corporation"in the App Store
Thanks for the head's up. I have tried to find the tensioning app without success, can you give a bit of a steer to help me find it? Thanks
There is another thread linked to this, I have the app. already but have not used it yet. Possibly a search might turn up some others comments on the app. etc.
I tried this against a freshly tensioned belt using the factory tool.... It was woeful. It gave three different readings and none were any where close to the 110Hz I'd set with the Ducati tool.
Yes, tried an app store search and emailed Gates direct they seem to have 4 apps including belt wear and belt tension calculation but can't see anything on belt tension measurement. Would be a good one to have available to us 999 owners. Thanks for your response Andy
Just looked it up on my iphone and took 2 secs to find. Search for gates corporation, click on it, slide across one screen to the right and there you have Gates Carbon Drive. It's intended for belt drives on bicycles but works in the range we need for cam-belts. Be aware of @nelly 's warning though.
Quite a few years ago now, a customer had a program on his PDA which used a small microphone. That worked pretty well. I think one of the issues is getting the microphone close to the belt and in the correct position to get an accurate reading. A phone can't get in tight like the Ducati tool I use.
All, thanks for the helpful comments, I did find the Gates Carbon Drive app which seems to be just for Apple but used this with simple mobile phone microphone to set the tension. I then used the cleartune app to check the frequency and got good correlation. I agree getting the microphone up close to the belt is key to consistency. All seems to be running well and I plan to check the tension in a couple of weeks time.
Do you think adding a microphone would help in this respect? Just like using a laptop with a microphone on a lead so you can get close, maybe doing the same on the phone would work? Like this kind of thing: (taken from this page: Google Maps)
Sounds like good news. Thanks for the feedback i was thinking that you can't really add a microphone lead to a phone but of course some earphones have microphones incorporated for hands free calling, so maybe it is possible.
It can be done but you need to use an adapter to use an external microphone. Here's a Youtube clip which explains why and what you have to do.
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