Shopsmith Forums

I have owned Shopsmiths for over 40 yrs. Recently I had a friend pass away and his wife contacted me wanting to know if I would be interested in a new never used Power Pro head. I said sure and helped her sell the existing Mark V. I mounted the Power Pro on my unit and I was in heaven. Well, for a while at least. I was cutting some 4/4 oak for a big project i had going. After what I would say was 3 hrs of use I noticed the saw bogging down but the RPM seamed to be steady.Like the belt was slipping. I pulled the covers to take a look and sure enough. The serpentine ribs were almost gone, after looking more closely I noticed that the two belts were misaligned by one groove.This had to be done at Shopsmith. It was a new unit. I ordered some new belts to get me going asap. Well! after more then two week I'm still waiting. Backordered! Really? A wear item. I have been getting the run around on when they would be in, Last week on Monday they said "One belt is in, the other one will be here tomorrow and will be going out no later the last Friday. Likely on Thursday. Well today I called again after reviewing my order status and seeing that they still haven't sent them out. There excuse today was. Well they are in, but we haven't had time to get them in our system yet. I can put up with a lot of crap, But it seem the the mother ship is caring less and less on customer service. Or maybe they should look at there inventory control a little better. This is a pair of belts , wear items for goodness sakes.

Update, Now there saying it will be the 1st of February. They didn't have the Poly V Belt after all. Hmmm. Interesting

Any chance it’s a belt that you could order from McMaster?

https://www.mcmaster.com/#v-belts/=1b2nafv

Thanks for the info, It appears that mcmaster doesn't make the Shopsmith style poly v belt

Some years back there was some doubt in a lot of our minds is shopsmith would/could survive. I stocked up on some parts in the case worst happened. I've been less in that mine set but I think I'll compile a list to include of a set of belts to have on hand in case some wear issues arise and I need to replace them on my powerpro's.

For me it would be pretty hard to be stopped my even several issues coming up, having multiple shopsmith take care of a lot of this. I have a whole headstock as a spare too boot. In some cases if it is important enough to you need to take on the responsibility for keeping a stock of part yourself.

I use to carry a few spare parts in my cars, fan belt, spare bulbs, along with tools to replace them. Sort of got out of that mold since the new belts are no easy change.... but I do keep tools along.

Ed

rbenstead wrote:Thanks for the info, It appears that mcmaster doesn't make the Shopsmith style poly v belt

Actually they do handle the style, but not in the short lengths SS uses.
https://www.mcmaster.com/#ribbed-v-belts/=1b2pbx2

Scroll down to "J Trade size".

I ended up rebuilding my old power head so I could finish my project. It is like going back to the stone ages, "Well not quit" after useing the Power Pro. It has been one month to the day that I have been waiting for my belts and You can't imagine how disappointed I am that I have to wait this long for a belt. Even though the Power Pro has only be used for a few hrs, the mother ship said they couldn't replace the belts at no charge. At this point, I don't even care . I just want to get them at some point. Stay Tune!

This is getting worrisome. Sure seems to be a lot of this type of "service" going on lately. I keep chalking it up to new/young help, but some questions/problems can't be answered by that argument.

I hope they get it together for all of our sakes ....

JMHO

rjent wrote:This is getting worrisome. Sure seems to be a lot of this type of "service" going on lately. I keep chalking it up to new/young help, but some questions/problems can't be answered by that argument.

I hope they get it together for all of our sakes ....

JMHO

An issue that I see is that we (the users) have limited access to those whose could help fix the user problems if they knew about them. The folks in Customer Service are not likely to carry these complaints to "Management".