I can't get the new replacement belts to work for very long. The belts keep coming off. I see the alignment is about a 1/4 of an inch off with the large auger pulley being to close to the engine. I separated the auger body, 3 bolts on each side of the machine and added a 1/4 inch wide large sized nut as a spacer for a shim. I bought a car belt 3L350 with no cog like the original belt I had and my test run was fine. Big storm tonight for a bigger test. Current conclusion: Bad alignment will throw the new belts and/or the new cog belts are no good. This post was edited by JustFixit on Fri, Mar 8, 13 at 18:10

I assume a snowthrower? with regular drive wheels and not tracks? Model #s/ type of equipment would be great. Regarding the recoil, is it actually engaging and pulling the engine over? If it is pulling the engine over, and it truly has no compression, it would possibly be a stuck valve- or worse a broken rod. Internal anyways.If not, maybe it is frozen and can't engage. Has the machine been sitting out in the snow or possibly re- frozen? It is a snowthrower..sorry....it is gear driven not chain. the model number is 31AS6BCE752...It has been left out after snow blowing. a friend was here and we got it started....the wheels were turning and it was working fine then we shut it off and restarted it and the wheels are not moving and it will engage the blower but will not move...the rubber drive wheel is not up against the drive disk... it seems to be something mechanical.we used wd40 and made sure everything is freed up..or it wouldn't have worked for a few minutes.

Well, I set off to replace my belts in this way. Undoing the engine bolt worked eventually, though I had to heat it up with a gas gun then hit the end with an impact wrench. Unfortunately that's where things fouled up. The pulleys were seized on. I tried a seriously strong puller, which only bent the pulleys out of shape. So - lateral thinking........ The things that are stopping the belts coming off are the keeps - two rods down the sides of the pulleys. It turns out that they are only held on by half-inch gripper nuts at the top, and are easily removed. Now the belts are free to drop off the pulleys. Further round the system there's a silver coloured link thing. Undo the bolt at the link end, then undo the nut holding the pulley. Shift the pulley out along its shaft so that the belt can clear the keep. There's a big spring in the way, but you can manoeuvre the the belt round it. That gets both front belts off and back on. I haven't tried to get the short belt at the back off, because it looks like you have to take the rear axle off. Bernie

Just an adjunct - I read down thru to page 27! I now see that Husqvarna is sold at Sears and Lowes, IMO this is no different than Home Depot. However, I went to a Husqvarna dealer and I'm sure the lawn tractors they sell are not the same ones as Sears and Lowes sells. YES OR NO? I also gather than Husqvarna is not a great mower but just a better than Yard Machine, Toro whatever. EVERYONE seems to be in LOVE with John Deere. OK, so I just spent some time at their website. A bit more expensive but I do want quality, reliability and a product that will last a long time. IF I bought the $800 Home Depot YM then I know that is a bottom end machine not in the same class as JD. IS Husqvarna from a Huskie dealer in the same class as the JD? For instance, compare the Huskie YTH20K46 for $1600 with the Premium Koler 20 hp, 46" deck to the John Deere LA110 (per website $1650 basically the same as the Huskie but has a 42" deck where the Huskie has a 46" deck) or LA120 (per website $1850 $250 more than the Huskie again a 42" deck vs the Huskie 46") an apples to apples machine as the JD? I see the Huskie has a Koler vs the JD has B&S but similar hp but the LA 120 has a V twin. Not sure how to compare this other than 1 cylinder vs 2 cylinder tho I'd think the V twin is a stronger longer lasting engine than the 1 cylinder. Besides the engines, is the JD worth the extra money as far as construction for longevity and reliability? BUT the LA 130 has the wash port at $2000, is that worth an extra $150? I store the mower in the garage and wet grass stinks and will rust the deck. I presently push the mower up on car ramps and scrape it with a paint scrapper and I don't like to do this!!!!!! See I'd spend the couple hundred more today for value over say 12-15 years, a small outlay if worth it. Tom