A Quick Understanding Of Drive Belts And Why Modern Cars Use A Serpentine Belt
Have you ever opened your car’s hood and noticed a rubbery loop entangled across different parts of the engine? That is called a drive belt. In some cases, it is also called a fan belt. Now what exactly is a fan belt or a drive belt? Basically, a fan belt is connected to different shafts of different parts of the engine, and with the help of friction, it can operate the different parts of an engine simultaneously. To put it simply the drive belt is spun by one part of the engine and due to the grip that the rubber provides the other parts of the engine that come within the loop of the drive belt are also spun resulting in the optimum functioning of an internal combustion engine (ICE).
Drive Belts have been around for a long time. And as with anything in the world, with time, there is also progress in technology, The same has happened with the drive belt. When we talk about drive belts today, it must be kept in mind that there are quite a few types of belts with the most modern one being a serpentine one. But, before we go into that, let’s talk about the function of this simple rubber loop a little more.
Evolution Of Drive Belts
Drive belts have been around for many many decades. And no, they were not always used in cars. In fact, one can find a drive belt even in heavy machinery. Rather, heavy machinery is exactly what drive belts were used for before the car came along. The belt would be connected to a powered pulley and they would be looped around the accessory components all of which would be synchronized to make the machine work more efficiently.
The first drive belts to be made looked nothing like the ones you see in your Ford or Volkswagen these days. In fact, they were not even made of rubber. Drive belts in the very beginning were made out of fabrics or leather. However, that came with its fair share of issues. For starters, they did not have much grip. If you ever, sat in the back seat made of fabric or leather with your mum or dad driving, how often did you slip out of the seat under hard breaking because you did not put your seatbelts on despite your mum telling you to do so? Numerous times right? So we know that neither leather nor fabric has a lot of grip. Putting them around heavy machinery and asking them to transfer power was probably a good idea in theory but due to the lack of grip, they would not remain steady. To add to that, the first drive belts made used to be flat. So both issues put together, the drive belt did tend to slip and also had an annoying tendency of wandering off the pulleys and bringing the machine to an undignified halt. If you wanted to make the belt stronger, you would have to make them wider. More often than not, that idea was not feasible.
Soon after mills came up with the idea of using ropes. Ropes had a single advantage over the fabric belts. Given the method in which ropes were made, they could fit in the groove of a pulley. However, they still had the issue of slipping due to lack of grip. Moreover, although one problem was solved, another problem began which was that ropes being round had a tendency to rotate around on the pulleys and as a result get tangled up around themselves. Due to the heavy machinery used in mills, there was a massive amount of power that needed to be sent around. It was then ideated by mill engineers that if they had a series of ropes doing this job, it would be more efficient than having a single flat belt doing the same job.
It was not until 1917 that a man named Charles C. Gates invented the endless V-belt. The endless V-Belt was essentially a big rubber loop. However, that was not all. The V-belt was neither circular nor flat, instead, it was shaped like a wedge. What advantage did this have? Since it was shaped like a wedge, the belt fit very snugly into the pulley and because it was made of rubber, it created more grip which meant that there was less chance of slipping and thus, much better power delivery. While the grip does heavily depend on the amount of tension the belt is under (the higher the tension higher the grip), it also depends on the surface area that is in contact with the pulley. These became the standard belts used in cars until the mid-1980s when a more modern type of belt came along.
New Age Brings New Belts
Progressive as they were, the V-Belts were not without their fair share of issues. To make the power delivery more efficient V-Belts had to be thicker. Thicker belts meant that the rubber would be more difficult to bend around the small pulleys or tight corners. Moreover, the belts could not bend backward so the engines till the 1980s would see multiple belts in their engines powering the machine. This is when more modern belts came about
The Multi-Groove Belt
Also known as a poly-groove belt or even a ribbed belt, this belt too is made of rubber. However, the type and quality of rubber are different and on the inner side, there are grooves. While the belt may be thinner, it still covers the same surface area as the V-belt. The grooves give the belt the ability to self-center themselves without losing the grip or wedging power of the V-belt. Due to the multi-groove belt being thinner as well, it can make much tighter turns around the pulleys and other parts of the engine bay. Thanks to the flexibility of the new belts, manufacturers could put the belt in more complex fashions within the engine that helped power a larger number of accessories. The back end of the belt is not grooved, but that does not mean that it cannot come of use. Since it is flat, it can be rerouted around idle pulleys and even drive other components. This is what gives rise to the serpentine belt.
The Serpentine Belt
The serpentine belt is essentially made of the multi-groove belt itself. However, it is not the kind of belt that is called serpentine but the way the multi-groove belt is set up on the engine component. The V-belt was a lot stiffer than the multi-groove belt which required manufacturers to put multiple belts across the engine component. With the serpentine belt, on the other hand, this issue does not seem to exist.
Due to the flexibility and grip provided by serpentine belts, even the outer side of the belt can come of use as it wraps around other components of the engine. As a result, one belt alone can go around all the pulleys and engine components providing the optimum transfer of power. Since the single belt wraps itself around the engine like a snake in a convoluted fashion, it is commonly known as the Serpentine belt. Most modern-day car manufacturers use this technology in their engines. The biggest advantage of the serpentine belt is that helps the engine be more compact and makes it easier to fix the engine without having to take out other components to get to the area where there may be an issue.
However, one major disadvantage of the serpentine belt system is that all the components are connected via the same belt including the alternator, coolant pump, and power steering. So if the belt faces any issue, all components of the engine are lost at the same time which can just stop your car and render it helpless.
Final Thoughts
Engines have definitely come a long way in terms of technology. But who would have thought that a simple rubber belt would be such an important part of the engine that keeps all the parts running smoothly? Turns out that the rubber belt is as important in keeping the car running as is any other part. Next time when you do look under the car’s hood you will be able to notice a lot more clearly and understand the part of the engine connected via the belt and how a singular belt can keep your car running. The serpentine system works on the Multi-groove belt. The design of the multi-groove belt to fit into a serpentine system is now standard in more cars, even down to the number of grooves on the belt. This is perhaps the one system that most cars agree on whether it be a Ford Focus a McLaren Senna or a Hyundai Santa Fe. This also makes it easier to find a drive belt in case your car’s drive belt needs to be changed. The serpentine belt is by far the best system to have come along in modern engines so far making the engine more efficient as well as more compact bringing all the components closer to be able to fit the pulleys or shafts within the snaking outline of the drive belt.
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