snoiger01
Bronze Member
Just when I got my life straight and my relationship with God was where it needed to be, the belt on my finish mower broke and I decided to change it myself...
So here I sit with one smashed finger, a crow-bar shaped bruise across my chest and a hurt ego from showing my kids how "Daddy can fix it."
After hours of inspection I determined that this Frontier mower is actually a Woods RM550, painted JD green and re-badged with a Frontier sticker on it. I went to the local New Holland dealer, who happens to be a Woods distributor and he was able to match the belt with an exact replacement...which happened to be a Woods belt.
The manual says to simply release the tension by moving the spring to one of three slots....mine has one slot, and its not where the picture shows it to be. So the manual is back in the file cabinet...worthless waste of paper.
The manual did say to remove 2 front bolts of a plate the gearbox is mounted to, then loosen 2 rear bolts and simply lift this plate like the hood of a car, install the belt around the large gearbox pulley, then lower the plate, route the belt around the various other pulleys and the spring pulley magically applies proper tension.
My problem is the spring loaded pulley wedged itself in the grooves of the large gearbox pulley when the belt broke. I did manage to pull this tension pulley back far enough to lift the "hood", and man it took all I had, but for the life of me I can't get it pulled back far enough again for the hood to go back down. What am I doing wrong?
Anyone have any ideas, other than sucking up my pride and taking it to the dealer? Changing a belt seems like it would be one of the easier tasks we tractor-folks get to contend with.
So here I sit with one smashed finger, a crow-bar shaped bruise across my chest and a hurt ego from showing my kids how "Daddy can fix it."
After hours of inspection I determined that this Frontier mower is actually a Woods RM550, painted JD green and re-badged with a Frontier sticker on it. I went to the local New Holland dealer, who happens to be a Woods distributor and he was able to match the belt with an exact replacement...which happened to be a Woods belt.
The manual says to simply release the tension by moving the spring to one of three slots....mine has one slot, and its not where the picture shows it to be. So the manual is back in the file cabinet...worthless waste of paper.
The manual did say to remove 2 front bolts of a plate the gearbox is mounted to, then loosen 2 rear bolts and simply lift this plate like the hood of a car, install the belt around the large gearbox pulley, then lower the plate, route the belt around the various other pulleys and the spring pulley magically applies proper tension.
My problem is the spring loaded pulley wedged itself in the grooves of the large gearbox pulley when the belt broke. I did manage to pull this tension pulley back far enough to lift the "hood", and man it took all I had, but for the life of me I can't get it pulled back far enough again for the hood to go back down. What am I doing wrong?
Anyone have any ideas, other than sucking up my pride and taking it to the dealer? Changing a belt seems like it would be one of the easier tasks we tractor-folks get to contend with.