At some point last year me and Uncle Chris were messing about with my tractor adjusting the steering and we spotted that the drive belt had lots of cracks in it and was pretty badly perished in places. It was still working but a worst case scenario is that it would snap whilst mowing the front garden and then I’d have to push it miles to get it back to my workshop…and this tractor is pretty bloody heavy.
I did a bit of research to find out which belt size I needed and popped down to a local belts and bearings workshop type place and bought one for £20 rather than the £45 that most mower sites were after. Then Winter arrived and it got cold. I hunkered down for the Winter hibernating in a nice warm house rather than rolling around on the frozen concrete floor of my workshop.
Winter came to an end and the weather suddenly picked up in February and it was positively Spring like. I gave Uncle Chris a call, he happened to be free so he came over and we set to it.
I’ve never had my tractor in quite so many pieces so it was a relief to have Chris with me. The drive belt is quite a bugger to replace as you have to take so many bits and pieces off the chassis and engine to release it. Release it we did however, eventually.
Putting the new one on was a piece of cake and we just went backwards through everything we had previously done and it was back together in no time. Fired up the engine and tried to drive it….nothing. I then realised I’d disengaged the clutch when we were moving it around the workshop. Re-engaged the clutch and it started moving, but very, very slowly.
After a bit of looking and a bit of thinking we decided we’d gone the wrong way around a pulley. Moved the belt across to the other side, tensioned it up again and all was marvelous. The tractor was flying along – I’d be mowing again in no time. Uncle Chris had to leave at this point and I was pretty tired so we knocked off for the day and I’d finish putting it back together again a few days later.
A few days later came and Oli and I went down to the workshop to finish off putting it together. It was only a few minutes before we realised the path the belt was taking was wrong. It would rub against the grass chute when the cutting deck was lifted which would damage both the grass chute and the belt. So I put the belt back to its original position and tried to make it as tense as possible but nothing I did was working.
I eventually concluded that I had the wrong belt. I double checked the writing on the new belt and it was exactly what I asked for. I disassembled the tractor again to get the belt off [ much quicker second time around ] and compared the new belt to the old one. Exactly the same size! I was perplexed at this point. I consulted online mower forums and made a post about my predicament. I’d done everything right. So I just got more and more confused.
Eventually I went back to the belts and bearings supplier and had a long chat with the fellow there. He was a bit bemused too but suggested I try a belt that is 1 inch smaller. He happened to have one in stock so off I popped with it and fitted it pretty quickly since I was now *very* familiar with the process. It was like night and day! The tension was perfect, the routing avoided the grass chute. It was a thing of beauty.
I called the chap at the belt shop and ordered a Kevlar wrapped belt of the same size and then went along and paid for the two belts. The belt that he loaned me is still on the tractor and the Kevlar belt is waiting until I next tear down the tractor and then I’ll do a replacement.
I’m still struggling to understand why everything on the internet [ possible echo chamber going on ] is telling me one size, and in reality I had to buy one an inch shorter. Ho hum. It’s fixed now and I’m happy again.