Hey everyone, and welcome back to the channel. Today we've got a Cub Cadet XT1 Enduro. Customer brought it in and said that no matter what, he can't keep the deck belt on. It'll always throw off. He's replaced the belt and done a lot of new parts to it, but he can't keep it on no matter what he does. I'm gonna show you how to diagnose and repair an issue like this.

If you're having exactly the same issue or a similar issue, whether you have the 46 or the 42-inch deck on your XT1, don't forget to hit that like and subscribe button as we go along if you enjoy the content. First thing I like to do on any mower before I get into the deck is make sure the tire pressure is good and that the deck is actually level.

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It will not cause the belt to come off, but it can contribute. first thing, the tire pressure, side to side, should be the same. The max on these is gonna be 10 psi, and the max on the front is gonna be 14. As long as they're the same side to side, you'll be good to go.

If you have your mower on a flat surface and you look across, the deck should just be slightly lower in the front, but side to side, it should be even. And this one is. If yours is not even, there are adjustments on the back, just beyond the rear tires.

 

That's on either side, and basically you'd loosen the top nut, tighten or loosen the bottom nut to level it out, depending on which side is higher.

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Same in the front, just beyond the tires if your front is too high or too low. The deck belt is new, or at least was new a very short time ago, and it is an OEM belt. Can't stress that enough. Do not try to use an aftermarket. It will not work well on this.

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The keeper here is intact, like it should be, and it's attached up at the top, just like such, and it also attaches through the frame on the other side. It should be even across the front, which it is. The belt is on. See if we can't figure out what the problem is.

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Belt looks like it's on all the pulleys. Should go around this one, around the other one that way, around the outside, and then comes over here and goes around this one. Right, down on this side, it is off of this pulley.

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These have keepers. Without those keepers, the belt will definitely come off if they're broken or anything to that effect. This one is in good shape. Actually looks pretty new. Just gonna take the 3 516th bolts out, and this will all come off. You can see where it's been rubbing.

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There and there and a little bit in the middle. it's sitting just like such. I wonder if those rub marks are maybe from when it came off. Looks like the back side of the belt's been rubbing. This came off for a very specific reason, and it happens, and it's kinda hard to realize exactly why. We're gonna take the deck off real quick so I can show you why that is and some more reasons that this belt will pop off.

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To get the deck off, it's pretty easy. We got one 5/16ths here that holds the keeper bracket on, and it comes straight off. It's what keeps that belt on the front. You can pull the belt off. And then we've got 4 pins that hold the deck on.

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One on the front. Push that rod out. Just let it hang or push it out of the way. One on each side, just in front of the tire. And the bracket will come down and out.

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We've got one that holds the cable on here. Take that just straight out, and then the cable pulls Got the whole deck loose now, but the cable pulls back, and it'll come out of that notch. I'll lift the deck height adjustment now that I've got both of those off, and I'll pull it out.

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And then I'm able to just grab onto it with a pair of needle-nose pliers, and I can kinda twist to the side, get this belt out of the way. I can kinda just twist it to the left side, and it'll come straight out of that notch. Again, all I'm doing is manipulating here just a hair to kinda get it to come up and out.

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Everything's free. Let's pull this out so we can get a better view. We will have to pull the spring towards the back underneath that rod for the brake and then slide it all out. Deck completely exposed.

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We can kinda move the belt a little bit away from the pulleys and spin the pulleys. If you get grinding noise or a bunch of noise out of them, you will wanna replace those. They shouldn't move up and down very much. These are darn near brand new. Very little play.

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You can tell they look brand new also. Same thing here. No up or down. You also shouldn't be able toGrab this pulley and move it up and down. Much more than that, a little bit of play is normal, but if you've got much more than at this outside edge, I'd say much more than 38ths of an inch, you will want to address the bushing here or the idler arm itself. They get worn out, and instead of having a perfect circle, they'll be more oblong like this notch here.

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The keepers should be in place, and they should be almost all the way against the pulley so there's no way for that belt to get off in those locations. There's one here and also one on the backside of this stationary pulley. Those are all good.

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I talked a little bit about the guards. They shouldn't be broken. They shouldn't be all bent up. That one on that other side's good. I don't see any issues with it whatsoever. This idler arm is what gets pulled on by the spring here to engage the blade and tighten it. as it comes, the brake in this location and also over here comes off and away from the pulley.

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When this pulley is under that spring tension here, this brake should be sitting against that pulley, and so should this one. This one does have a separate spring over here that holds it against there. That's to stop everything once you disengage the blade. But the problem here is that this brake pad is worn out completely. You can see it's worn down in 2 spots.

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So this idler arm is actually coming way too far this way, and that's why this belt is jumping off of this pulley even though it has a keeper on here. It should only come to about this location, and once it comes much further past there, that's when it'll jump off of that. That is the issue.

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He's got everything else in good condition, but this brake is bad, which is causing the belt to jump off. We'll pull this spring off of here, and I'll show you a few of the other reasons that this can happen on these decks. Get that out of the way, and then we can move the idler pulley just kinda back so it's not touching the spindle, and we can move the belt out of the way. The other side is still under spring tension, so the brake is gonna be sitting there.

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But we'll test this pulley and make sure Sounds like it's hitting a little bit of grass up underneath some area. Yeah, just a little bit of debris on the side of the deck. But you shouldn't hear any noise from this. You shouldn't hear any bearing noise, and this shouldn't be going up and down all over the place.

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This one's a little bit wonky. I kinda see a little bit of wave to it, but it should be level, and if not, it'll allow this to come off, because this keeper cannot keep that belt on there when it's shutting down. If you grab ahold of the blade and you try to move it up and down, you shouldn't see this pulley moving any direction. There's basically no play in this pulley, and there's no noise to this pulley besides it hitting the grass on the deck there on the inside.

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It should be smooth. This pulley is good. The spindle is good. The bearings are good in it. There's no problems. Again, it shouldn't be worn out, it shouldn't be oblong, and you shouldn't be able to move it. You shouldn't see all of this going in and out or up and down as you're messing with the deck. Bolts should be tight, of course, against the deck.

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Same thing on this side. To test the spindle, we're hearing it obviously rub on the blade, and there is some debris down below, some built-up grass and stuff. If you've got too much of that, it can cause the pulley to stop because of all that grass buildup and can cause the belt to come off.

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I don't think that's the case, but we will clean it while this is all off of here before we put everything back together. But I don't hear any bearing noise or anything wrong with this one either. It's in good shape. Again, the only thing wrong with this deck is just this brake pad over here. If you look up this brake pad in the OEM parts list, you're gonna realize it's like, I don't know, 80, 90, $100, somewhere in there.

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We use an aftermarket kit that, in my opinion, is actually better than the OEM, because the brake pad material on it, this is like a, almost like a plastic, and what comes on the other ones is more of an actual brake material that lasts for longer. This kit comes with both brakes, and it comes with the spring and the bushing.

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if you need any of this stuff for that other brake, if it's all worn out, you can replace it also. It actually looks like it Yeah, it comes with 2 springs and a nut. Not gonna use that right now. I'm only gonna use this. But again, that's like a brake pad material more than a plastic.

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All we need to remove this is just a 5/16". 2 bolts that sit there. The whole pad comes off, and the new one goes on. Look at the difference as it comes back.

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Obviously, we don't have our spring back on there yet. But it's gonna stop well short of that pulley location. Put our spring on. Perfect. If when all this is hooked up, if you can just move this freely without the brake pad hitting on it and it stopping, you will wanna replace this other brake.

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I'm not gonna do that right now since this one's in good shape. Before I put this deck back in and put the belt on and the keeper As long as you confirm that that is in the slot on both sides and this keeper is installed, it will stay in place as you reinstall it.

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It's not working real well. Let me slide this back in, one more important thing to mention. This belt is new, but if yours has cracks in it or wear spots in it, some of them get real worn down in a certain spot where it's stopped at, if you see any of those things or it's not an OEM belt, replace it with an OEM and one that's in good shape. You shouldn't see a bunch of cracks or wear marks or any flat spots on either side of this.

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Otherwise, that can also cause the belt to throw off. As we go to put the deck back in, we're gonna hook up our idler spring and basically push it in. When we get far enough under, we've got plenty of room to work with, but we can put this spring all the way under. And we can actually go from the back side here to hook it in.

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Once it's hooked in, you just kinda rotate it around, and it makes it a little bit easier than trying to use your pliers to bend that and get it down into that groove. Keep that in the middle here. Line everything up.

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I've kinda got this at an angle, easier to see, but you don't have to wait until this is fully installed to get the cable into the hole. And once it's in there, we're just gonna stick this clip into this hole on the back side. So pull it through and get that pin in the back side so it's secured. Now we can get this lined up.

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Drop the deck level all the way. Do the pin here and then the one on the other side. And of course, the one in the front.

We will reinstall the belt on top. Get our hanger in the front. And then we've gotta install the keeper.

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What I like to do is engage my blades. It gets that belt nice and tight on there like it should be, and then you can install it easily by going up and then into the hole on the other side. I'll show you which hole that is here shortly.

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And it'll kinda hang there, and then you can get your screw started, our bolt started.Here is the proper hole location up top. It's the furthest one forward out of those 3.

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Here we are. Here's how everything should look when it's all completely installed. How the belt should be and everything. People ask all the time how they can tension the belt, and there is actually no belt tensioner on this model. So there's not a practical way to do it, but I will show you how to do that should you need a little bit more tension.

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This seems a little bit loose. It doesn't seem quite as tight as it should be, and if you look at that spring over there, when it's all the way engaged, there's hardly any space in between those coils. I've got this all pulled back out and I've got the cable uninstalled to show you exactly what to do to tension this. There's hardly any tension on that spring, and this bracket directly controls how much tension is on it or how far it is away from the idler arm.

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If this arm is to come back another 3/8ths to a half an inch, uh, or however far you need it depending on your situation, that'll solve the problem and put more tension on that spring. Take this spring off, get it out of the way. Then I'll remove my 5/16ths bolt here holding this one in. It's the same as all the other bolts.

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And this bracket just comes straight out. We'll put that in a vice and get it bent back to where it should be. Seems like I've sprung a leak over the weekend. Got a good air leak going from the compressor hose. All I'm gonna do is I'm gonna move this further this way, and I want it to be right at this corner that it moves.

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That's probably between 3/8ths and a half an inch different than what it was before. Let's reinstall it and see what happens. If you do this fix, you wanna make sure that there is still a little bit of play in this cable.

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If your cable's too tight, the brake will never come back against the pulley and it won't stop spinning when you disengage the blades. So make sure that you've got some play here. Otherwise, you'll run into bigger issues where your blades will not stop. Now with our blades engaged, we've got quite a bit of tension and quite a bit of space in between these coils, as opposed to them being basically right together. That's about exactly how it should be.

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You can just hit on the backside of here after removing this. If you remove here, you can actually just hit with a hammer to push it here to the left-hand side. I don't recommend doing it that way, but it is possible without removing the deck to adjust that. There is only so far adjustment once more.

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Don't adjust it too far where there's no slack in that cable. Here we can see from the other side view, put a little tension on it, just pullin' on this belt. Everything is perfect. You always wanna double-check that the belt is on all the pulleys once you're finished and that the deck is still level, that everything was installed correctly, that belt's tight.

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Double-check all that before you engage it, because if you don't, a lot of times that belt will have come off and you'll smoke your belt instantly as soon as you try to start it up. Let's see what this one does. ......... Well, there we have it.

Something as simple as that brake pad coming back too far was causing that to come off. We've got good tension on it now and the whole deck is solid all the way across. All the pulleys are level, level. The keepers are on. Everything is gonna work great for this customer. It's got plenty of tension on it when he engages that deck.

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Hopefully this helps somebody out if you were having the same or a similar issue on your Cub Cadet XT1, XT2, or any other MTD with this deck on it, whether it's the 42 or the 46.

Don't forget to hit that like and subscribe button if you enjoyed the content. Thank you for watching and have a great day.

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Frequently Asked Questions FAQ

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Q: Why does my Cub Cadet XT1 throw the deck belt?
A: Common reasons include a worn brake arm, bad idler pulley, uneven deck, or improper belt tension.

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Q: Can you use an aftermarket belt on a Cub Cadet XT1?
A: Aftermarket belts often cause issues. Always use an OEM deck belt for best performance and fit.

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Q: How do I adjust belt tension on a Cub Cadet mower deck?
A: There's no official tensioner, but adjusting the brake bracket position can restore proper tension.

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