On Wed, 03 Feb 2021 13:00:11 -0500, Clare Snyder
wrote:

On Wed, 03 Feb 2021 00:18:51 -0500, J. Clarke
wrote:

On Tue, 02 Feb 2021 23:08:45 -0500, Clare Snyder
wrote:

On Tue, 02 Feb 2021 21:46:46 -0500, J. Clarke
wrote:

Went out to blow snow and, as usual, the damned belt is off the damned
snowblower. It's an Ariens, it's not old, and this is a known problem
with the model. I've tried all the reasonable fixes that I see on
various Web sites and Youtube (I'm not going to go buy a lathe to turn
a new redesigned pulley, which one guy who had a lathe did). It used
to be that it needed the belt on at the start of the season, but it
seems like now it needs it before every storm.

My old Ariens, that some #$%^&*( stole, gave me no trouble.

So, this group has a lot of wisdom about a great many things. My
options that I see are to keep fixing the thing until spring and then
look for an old Ariens on Craigslist and take my chances with its
condition, or bite the bullet and spend for a Honda (if I can find
one) on the basis of Japanese engineering and workmanship, or do
something else (moving to Florida is not an option).

So, any advice? And yeah, I know I could shovel. I've reached an age
and state of decripitude where that's not advisable.
Which belt? wat kind of belt are you using? Are the bvelt guides
properly afjusted? Is the belt jumping, flipping, breaking, shredding?

This is the belt that drives the wheels.

The problem is the design of the drive system. They cheaped out and
used the pulley as a clutch--it slides on its shaft and when you
engage the drive what happens is that the pully is slid down the shaft
to be held against the corresponding piece on the axle by spring
tension.

The downside of this is that when the drive is not engaged the pulley
that acts as clutch is offset from the pulley on the engine. The
result is that the belt easily slips off the pulley. If the thing
hasn't been run for a while and the belt has stiffened up a little,
off it comes every time.

There is a stop for the pulley and the documented fix is to put some
hose on the stop to restrict the movement of the pulley. Well that
was not sufficient. I tried a nut on it, still insufficient. And
there is a limit to how much it can be shimmed because shimming it too
far means that the clutch can't disengage.

The alternative fix is to move the pulley on the engine shaft, but it
is made such that the pulley is one big chunk of metal the whole
length of the shaft, the other end of that chunk of metal is the drive
pulleys for the blower, and there isn't clearance to move it, so the
only way to move it is to make a new one with the drive pulley for the
wheels shifted to more closely align with the clutch pulley.

The belt is a conventional V-belt, sold by Ariens for this specific
purpose. There are no belt guides. The belt seems to come off when
the thing is just sitting idle. There's a cover over it and I don't
usually take that cover off until the belt has come adrift so don't
know the exact progression, but it's fine at the end of one storm and
at the start of the next one I have to put the belt back on.

Note that googling "Ariens snowblower drive belt keeps coming off"
gets nearly a million hits, and when I run that search the first two
are videos which explain the problem more effectively than I can.

have you tried this fix?

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q...&F ORM=VDQVAP

That was the second thing I tried.

I worked for an Ariens dealer ages ago and we never had those
problems. Seams they have cheapened the mechanism just like MTD and
others. I don't have those friction drive problems anymore since I
bought a hydrostatic Yamaha. Hydrostatic Hondas also solve the problem
Also it appears the steel rod "cage" that bolts to the motor leaves
too much space between the cage and the belt which can allow the belt
to jump off the small pulley. I think if I still had an ariens I would
re-bend that cage to not allow the belt to come out of the groove
(long with the adjuster nut fix) Just remember that nut MUST be a
prevailing torque type nut - either a Nylock or a "stover" style self
locking nut

The thing is, it comes off the big one, not the little one. There
really should be some guides on the big one.