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- Hey guys, welcome back,
today, I'm gonna show you how to replace the auger belt
on a Craftsman snowblower made by AYP,
you will also see some of these snowblowers branded Poulan.
And here's the machine, Craftsman.
Like I said,
you will see some of these exact same blowers
branded differently.
Even though I'm doing this on a Craftsman snowblower,
if you have one that looks the same,
it's probably the exact same belt you will need
and it will probably be the exact same procedure.
However, always double check your part numbers
before buying parts for your machine.
Symptoms that will indicate
that you need to place the auger belt are that
the snow will not shoot out the shoot like it used to,
it may not shoot out at all,
and if it does, it might be weak.
Also, if you hit deep snow,
all of a sudden, it stops blowing,
but it will blow when the snow is very light and thin.
So again, those are symptoms of that.
Also, if you see or smell a lot of smoke
coming out from under this cover,
it's more than likely your belt is burned out.
Now, the reason I'm replacing the belt
on this snow blower today is
because we did have some snow that was kind of slushy,
the owner put away the machine,
and some of the snow was left down
in the impeller down here.
It froze up, and when he went to use it,
the belt got burned out a bit.
Now to get started in this repair,
the first thing you need to do is remove the belt cover.
There's going to be a small bolt on each side, holding it,
I've already got them loose.
Now just pull the cover right off.
Now what's happened to this belt,
as I mentioned, the impeller was frozen
and you can see here that the belt is worn in one section.
So it's very thin in this part here
where the belt was around the pulley,
but on the other parts of the belt,
it is the exact proper width.
Now, even though the belt isn't totally snapped in half,
if you keep using a machine like this,
what's going to happen is
you're going to have excessive vibrations
because the belt is uneven all the way around.
And it's definitely going to slip where it's more narrow
where it was burned out.
Now, since I'm working alone,
I've got a stool back here to hold the machine
once I split it apart.
Now, you don't necessarily have to remove
the whole shoot assembly to do this repair,
but I like to just remove it
because it only takes like 20 seconds
and then it's not in your way
when you take the blower apart
and also when you put it back together.
So what I'll do is just take off the 9/16 nut over here.
And there's a washer under there as well.
Now, what I'm going to do is just move the whole assembly
out of the way.
Now for safety purposes,
it is recommended to disconnect the spark plug.
This is to prevent accidental startups.
So just disconnect the spark plug boot
and just leave it far away from the plug.
The next thing I'm going to do is
get the auger belt right off the pulley here.
And what I like to do is hold the belt
on the pulley like this, and then pull on the pull cord.
And there we go.
Now on each side of the blower here,
you're going to see a bolt with a 9/16 head,
so you need to completely remove the bolt like this
on each side of the machine.
Now, before I remove the last bolt on these machines,
I like to have my stool in the back,
that's so that when the machine separates,
it can lean on the stool.
Also, as I'm removing the bolt,
I hold the back end of the machine as well.
(impact wrench whirring)
And now you can let the machine separate itself.
And now what I do is I try to just leave the machine
the way it is without disturbing it too much.
I usually reach in and just grab the belt right out.
Now, sometimes you just have have to prop it up just a bit,
just to get the belt out.
Then you just want to get that belt completely out
and try to leave the front end of the machine
in this position here, as you see right now.
And here's what I mean by the wear area on the belt
right where the pulley was.
Now, the belt part number is 532408010,
or you can buy Stens 265-361.
Now a lot of people,
when they go to buy the belt for this machine,
they end up mixing both of these belts
because they're almost identical.
However, this belt here in my left hand
is a tiny bit shorter than this belt here.
So if you buy this belt,
and when you have the auger lever down
the belt is still loose and it's not blowing snow properly,
it's because you got the wrong belt.
In that case, you'd wanna use this belt here
which is just a little bit shorter.
So what I do now is I just get the belt on that pulley.
And before I reassemble everything here
what you want to do is
make sure you have this part over here
that I'm zooming in on, which is kind of like a hinge,
you want those parts together exactly like that
before you put it back.
If it has come apart on you,
then all you have to do is line up these parts here
on this pin here on each side.
Now one really critical thing here to do
when you reassemble the machine here is
to make sure that this pulley is moved up a bit like that
or else it's going to be getting caught in the pulley here.
So what I usually do is I keep this down a little bit,
and then that part moves out of the way.
So I do that as I'm joining the parts together.
To start with here,
I'm just going to line things up.
And again, this is how you want things in there.
Now I am going to hold down the auger lever just a bit.
I've got my bolt for here ready.
And now, I'm just going to join everything together.
And you want these tabs to go underneath here
and get your belt in front of the idler pulley
before you put the bolt in.
So get a bolt in here as quick as you can
and also get this bolt in as quick as you can as well.
So now what I'm going to do is tighten up the two bolts
on a very low setting with my impact,
and then I will finish up the tightening by hand.
(impact wrench whirring)
And now tighten up both bolts by hand,
just use common sense and you want it fairly tight.
Now what you want to do is get the auger belt on the pulley.
If this is blocking the way,
all you have to do is loosen the bolt here
and move the belt finger.
Otherwise, just leave it where it is.
So start your belt like that on the pulley.
And then, what I do is I grab the pull cord
and I pull it slowly.
And now the belt's gonna go right around the pulley.
Then, what you wanna do over here is make sure that
the belt is in front of that plastic pulley, just like that.
And now what you wanna do is
check for the tightness of the belt
and how everything's working.
And when I have the lever down, the belt is nice and tight,
and it's important that you have tension here
or else your machine will bog down
or not blow snow properly when you get into deep snow.
Now let's say you put a belt on
and you don't have enough tension
after you put the lever down,
first, make sure that you did use the correct belt,
as I showed earlier in the video.
So if that's the case
what you wanna do is check the auger belt linkage
or cable, and then you would want to tighten that up.
So if the belt was too loose,
what I would do here is loosen the nut here,
disconnect the spring,
and then actually turn in this part as far up as I could,
so that when I put down the lever,
it puts more pressure on the belt.
So those are all things you need to check
after you install a new auger belt.
And also, you don't want the belt to be too tight
because if it's too tight,
the augers might still be turning
when the lever is not engaged.
So at this point here,
I'm just going to put back the belt cover.
And what you wanna do is install the two small bolts here
that hold the cover.
And the one on this side.
(impact wrench whirring)
And now reattach the shoot.
Now, what you'll need to do here is
align the square piece of plastic here
and this part here to the holes on top of the shoot.
Just like that.
Now, if your shoot tilt spring has come off,
this is how it goes back on.
And you want this part here, right there.
And on these machines,
I do like to spray a bit of WD-40 down here.
(aerosol hissing)
It just makes it a little easier to move the shoot around.
And you can also lube the parts here
of the joystick for the shoot.
And now just reconnect the spark plug.
And on this machine,
I do have to put this plastic cover back on.
All right, so I'm all done putting the belt back on.
I'm gonna take the machine out and try it out.
(snowblower engine roaring)
So as you saw in the video, guys,
it's not that hard to replace the auger belt.
Again, you may have to replace the auger belt
if your machine is not blowing snow properly
or not blowing at all.
And again, when you do this repair,
as I mentioned in the video,
make sure you have the correct belt.
Thanks again for watching, guys.
If you like the video, please like it,
share and subscribe to the channel.
Have a great day.
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