That's what I'll be doing once Amazon delivers the new one tomorrow...replacing the drive belt. I am looking at videos now on how to do it and it's like it's a complicated matter of removing parts to get the belt on and then remembering to put the parts back on. Ugh. I hate this part of home ownership. We have a 1 acre lawn so there is no way we could afford to pay someone to mow it every week.
I've never changed a lawn tractor belt, but I've replaced the serpentine belt on my truck once. (And it's not a fun time. Have to put the belt on in a very specific sequence/way and then crank on the tensioner pulley to slide the last bit on.)
Just keep all your bolts and bits near the area, in a way that you can remember how they go back on, and you should be fine. Take pictures of the process if you have to in order to remember things.
Like everyone else, I've never replaced a lawn tractor belt either. I've always paid someone to do the mowing. There are a lot of small lawn care companies around here competing with each other, so you can get a pretty good price. Maybe I'm just lazy, but I've always felt that it works out to be a lot better than the manual labor of mowing and then the upkeep of a mower on top of that.
I ordered the part off Amazon, it arrived the next day and I watched 3 videos for my type of lawn tractor. My daughter, husband and I were able to get it taken care of in around an hour and the absolute hardest part was getting the pulley off! I really need to buy a metal pipe to keep around here for more leverage. I only have a tiny one I use when things on my bike get too tight.
I've really thought about paying people to care for the lawn but we have 1 acre and it would be approx $75 every week. That's way out of my league. I think as we get older we'll consider something different because I don't want to be 75 and still trying to crawl underneath a stupid lawn tractor to change belts LOL And yeah, it would be me doing it since I have the smaller hands.
Maybe a handy friend or a mechanic could do it?
