360 Drive Belts (Real belts, not rubberbands)

Discuss LEGAL mods for your game systems, and turning them into portables!

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Jongamer
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360 Drive Belts (Real belts, not rubberbands)

Post by Jongamer » Sat Nov 05, 2011 12:28 pm

Alright since my 3 year Warranty is up, I need to replace the drive belt to fix the sticky tray. But As I have read, all I can find on ebay are the cheap rubberbands people sell as Belts. Is there any seller, or anywhere that I can buy an actual drive belt for a Phillips-Liteon drive? Don't want to order from anywhere that is gonna charge me $5+ to ship something that is pretty much weightless.

I am in no rush, I will just leave a disc in the drive to keep the tray from jamming, like I have been doing for the past year or so.

Jongamer
Senior Member
Posts:2151
Joined:Wed Dec 13, 2006 2:43 pm
PSN Username:Geekystig790
360 GamerTag:Mesu Gitsune
Location:Fairborn, Ohio

Re: 360 Drive Belts (Real belts, not rubberbands)

Post by Jongamer » Tue Nov 08, 2011 1:39 am

Really nothing?!? Whatever, thought it was simple question, guess not.

Galane
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Joined:Sat Feb 04, 2012 4:28 am

Re: 360 Drive Belts (Real belts, not rubberbands)

Post by Galane » Sun Feb 19, 2012 1:10 am

Try this. Put a small pan of water on your kitchen stove and heat it until it starts to boil. Turn the burner off and move the pan to a cool burner.

Drop the belt into the hot water and leave it for 60 seconds. Fish it out with something other than your hand, let it cool then dry it off and reinstall in the drive.

Rubber is unlike most things. When heated it contracts instead of expanding. That property is copied by synthetic materials used in place of natural rubber. Dropping a DVD tray drive belt into hot water causes it to contract slightly and stay contracted.

If only Sony and Microsoft weren't such cheap outfits and went with gear driven trays, they'd never stick. It's easy to tell when a disc drive is gear drive, the tray makes a bit of a whine when moving and when open you can look in and see there's just a bunch of gears, no belt.

The ultimate cure would be an aftermarket geartrain replacement for the belt and pulleys.

Along with boiling the belt, get some silicone lube spray. Don't just blast it at the drive! Spray some into a disposable cup, well away from the drive. Dip a small screwdriver in and use that to apply the lube along the tray slides and locking pin track on the bottom of the tray. Manually operate the locking system that raises and lowers the laser and rails. Drop some lube in the angled tracks and run it back and forth a few times to spread the lube.

It doesn't take much of the lube! Don't get any on any part of the laser head or the tray belt and pulleys! You don't want to use any sort of grease, not even the lightweight yet sticky kind some older fully gear driven disc drives used. Those old ones had frigging *powerful* tray motors to ensure they'd work forever. Modern wimpy motors can't overcome the extra drag from grease. The silicone lube slicks things up without causing any drag, nearly frictionless.

One more thing, don't get silicone lube onto anything you'll want to paint. It's nearly impossible to remove, even from metal.

I did both boiling the belt and lubing the mechanical parts on my original Xbox. Now the drive works like new.

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