Buy the belt and look at the diagram off of John Derre parts it very easy to figure out. I know my local JD dealer it would cost me a arm and two legs to do that for me. That is why I bought my machine from a dealer 60miles away. Replacing the mowing belt is about the easiest belt to replace on that machine wait till the drive belt break's then u will want the dealer to do it.

It should be somewhat easy at the worst. As for what your JD dealer would charge I can only guess.....I could see it hitting 100.00 or more and that is if they only do EXACTLY what you ask. Sometimes there could be a reason the belt broke. Do you want that fixed also and then call it "putting on a belt" for 225.00.

Now to tell you what I would charge at my independent shop to simply install the belt.....45.00 plus the cost of the belt if you bought it from me.

networker

Hi Gabe,
I did this chore about two weeks ago...replacement of the deck belt. Probably very similar to your LX 280 ...mine is a 42" JD LT 180. I got the belt from the dealer where I purchased the mower. Be sure they understand which belt you need. They use all kinds of terms...drive belt, primary belt, secondary belt...etc. There's one belt that goes from the pulley at the bottom of the engine back to the transmission...be sure they understand that this is NOT the belt you want. Their service guy had confused the stock numbers and I had to call them back to get it straight. They had it in stock, thankfully, as they should in your case as well. I could not locate my owner's manual, so I was flying blind when I started the job of replacing the belt. Luckily, there is a diagram on the deck itself, showing which side of which pulley the belt should go on. Some of the deck pulleys had guards on them, so I had to remove a guard or two. Not a difficult job, but the nuts holding the pulleys or the idlers or the guards were of three different sizes, requiring three different socket wrenches, one of which was 16 mm (metric) that I was able to locate in one of my old el cheapo wrench sets.
First I removed the deck from the underside of the mower. That was not too difficult, but did require some bending, stretching, laying on the ground...but all in all, not too bad. The part of the job that took me the longest was reconnecting the deck to the front hanger after replacing the belt. I'm sure some neighbors within earshot received an unsolicited vocabulary lesson during the last ten minutes of the job. (An image comes to mind of moms rushing outdoors and covering their kids' ears...) The spindles did not have any zerks for greasing, although I had the grease gun ready. Total time, start to finish, was maybe 45 minutes, including cleaning up all around the deck. Good luck with your replacement project... hope things go smoothly.

Shamrock in Va.

Unless you are using this mower 100 hours per year, it is very likely that there may be something else wrong. I would list the gorey details but I'll wait until you get the lobotomy reversed.

Why not ask the dealer what they would charge to replace the belt? You probably will purchase the belt there. The big difference will be getting the tractor to the shop - or perhap's that dealer has a service van and will change at your property. I would guess $125 to $150 including the belt if the dealer I use changed it.

If you do decide to change it yourself just take the actual belt into your dealer and they will be able to match it. The deck belt should be pretty easy to change since you can remove the deck to get to it. There should be three pulleys for the blades (the belt goes around the outside of these, one main pulley that has the belt that goes to the engine (the belt goes around the outside of this one as well), and two idler pulleys (the back of the belt rides on these).

You can also ask the dealer how to change it. He may be changing one in the shop to show you how (take your digital camera). It is very simple to do. I agree that you should take the original belt (or your tractor maintenance manual) to the dealer. Changing the belts will give you the confidence to try other maintenance procedures as well. Feels great...

good luck
-Carey

Thanks everyone for your help. I called the local dealer and the belt has a cost of $33 plus tax. The cost for them to change it out is $60. I think I will give it a shot; what do I have to lose? Just my man card when I have to load it up and take it to the shop if I fail! Anyway, looking at the deck, I sure can't see anything wrong with it that would have caused the belt to break after just 74 hours of use; bad belt? Could something have lodged up under and caused it to break? It was a clean break and the belt does not look to be in terrible shape.
Sure is a bad feeling having it break on this high dollar machine, now one starts to question if I should have purchased two Craftsman, etc for the price of one in order to have a back up!

Remove the deck it simple just do it step by step as shown in the owners manual.You have the quick tension release lever.You will want to remove the black plastic shields on each side of deck.You may find something lodged in there and cut grass builds up.

If you have not removed the deck before its time.Not keeping the underside clean from dry built up grass could have put stress on the belt?Sure the blades will need sharpened or replaced.Puting on the belt will be simple and there might be a belt routing decal?You will need to release the tension from a spring.Locate the driven and idler pullies and route the belt acordingly.Piece of cake.

I agree with johndeere above, but be careful of the tension spring putting it back on, a very good way to pinch your skin, so wear good gloves and use a good screw driver (usually place the hood in the shaft of the screw driver and physically get it on) or pliars, pinch the hook and pull, just a good place to give up some blood. But the old saying around here is "if your not bleeding, your not working".

"now one starts to question if I should have purchased two Craftsman, etc for the price of one in order to have a back up!"

One broken belt does not a bad tractor make. I am sure Sears belts are no better than John Deere belts. Sounds like the belt had a defect if it broke cleanly. If it happens again than you can start looking for other causes. Usually a belt will get smoked before it will break unless it is very old.

Just a follow up posting; I did it! Last Saturday, I took about 2 hours to change the belt and do a good cleaning of the deck. The most difficult part was the weight of the deck and getting it in position to attach back to the tractor. The local JD dealer said something must have got caught (rock, piece of wire, nail)under the belt and pulley and cut it, since it only had 74 hours on it and there was no apparent or excessive wear on the belt. Thanks to all for giving me the confidence to undertake the repair. Hopefully, I will not have any other repairs to make, but if I do, you can bet I'll let you all know!

I did the drive belt on my LX176 a few weeks ago. The most time consuming thing was bending back into shape this belt guide that had gotten bent sometime before I got it. Every time I tightened the bracket, it moved out of the damned hole it needed to be in.

Had it not been for that, it was an hour job. Instead I spent 45 minutes fiddling with the belt guide.

Quick questions - The drive belt on my LX176 just went after 11 years. I'm having some trouble getting one of the pulleys off. I'm trying WD-40 to loosen one of the nuts but it's stubborn. In addition, the one pulley that is stuck is on the bar underneath the tractor that swivels, so it's hard to get leverage. Is there anything out there that can loosen bolts better than WD-40?

Second, how did you get the drive belt over the pulley for the transmission? Is it possible to snake the loop up through the fan blades above the pulley? I took the seat off my tractor hoping to see the fan, but the tractor fender assembly covers the fan. I can't see how this whole process can take only an hour!

Any help would be greatly appreciated! My lawn is starting to grow fast, and the local Deere dealer has a 4 1/2 week wait for repairs!