Rim Drive Mod or how to make it even better

Tom, if you are impatient and dying to try RIM drive on your VPI it is alot of fun to DIY with an old platter+ bearing . I don't know if it is better or not than the stock upgrade, but it works very well and surely much less expensive !

I finally got my rim drive yesterday. I hooked it up, and tried it out. Right now, I have 2 problems:

1) Speed stability. The KAB speedstrobe shows that the table is not running smoothly. Just by visual inspection I can tell that this speed instability results from the belt on the rim drive. It does not form a perfect circle. It other words, the belt has a few "bulges" which cause the contact pressure with the platter to increase, thereby briefly speeding it up. How does one address this?

2) I cannot currently use the Periphery ring clamp because it contacts the rim drive. To accomodate the ring clamp I would need to raise the table about 1/2 inch. If you loosen the Scoutmaster feet enough to raise the table 1/2 inch, the table itself will no longer be stable, but will be "wobbly" instead. What to do?

Thanks.

Tom

Tfkaudio,

Please see the recent thread on SSM/rim drive with cloud 11 vibration issues. In it several of us with rim drives worked through minor problems we were having. In short, my rim drive was behaving in a similar way for at least the first few days. This has smoothed out with time to the point were now(2 weeks latter) I'm getting as smooth movement as I was with the belts. Light contact pressure and softer footers have helped with this. As far as your height issue, I did have to raise mine especially with the new footers but it wasn't as difficult as your situation sounds. Do you have the mini feet or standard feet?

The afore mentioned post is more comprehensive. This will work out and you'll be glad you did it.

I use the standard Scoutmaster feet. (My original table was a standard Scoutmaster which has been upgraded piece by piece to SuperScoutmaster).

Thanks.

Tom

I already had the mini feet when I did the rim drive. They probably make raising and leveling the table easier. It's an additional investment I know but you may want to try them.