SANDING BELT SHOE

 Here is where I had to make some important changes to my Grizzly.  First I assembled it according to the instructions, and then felt happy enough to put the one sanding belt that comes with it, onto the wheels.

As soon as I had the sanding belt on to the grizzly, I recognized that there was a big problem!  It seems that the adjusting screws are not allowed to slide in there places enough to actually allow you to adjust the shoe into the correct and centered position.

The shoe was clearly about ½ an inch too far out of alignment, and no matter how I tried to use the tracking adjustments it would not come into alignment.

I believe this problem is a design flaw I had been warned about on the BLADE FORUM.

I took of the support bracket to the shoe and took it to my shop where I did some work on it.  I drilled some new holes for the adjustment nuts on the shoe to slide within, and used a hand file to open the holes up to allow more adjustment movements of the nuts.

I replaced the brackets and sanding shoe onto the Grizzly and found that this fix had been correct, and that I now had the shoe positioned in line with the sanding belt.

BELT INSTALLATION

Ok, this looked harder than it turned out to be.

The thing you have to do is just place the belt onto the wheels, then raise the support rod assembles up to where the belt feels tight. Then tighten down the knobs to hold the rod in that position. Take off the belt, and raise it up another ¼ inch.

I had tightened down the stopper/collar at the place where the belt felt tight, so it was easy to see the ¼ inch space when I raised up the rod as shown here.

BELT INSTALED

Ok, first you have to put the Belt Tension Knob onto the Grizzly so this will all work, but after you do that, this turns out to be a beautiful system on the grizzly!.. Truly a fast way to change belts.  Just pull a bit on the knob to gain some slack to place the belts into position, then let go.