swear to god i was gonna go insane! my belt tension has always been a little loose, but today i took my drive wheel off to put new bearings in and magically, i cant get the drive wheel back on because my belt was all of a sudden wayy too tight. i tried for 2 hours to see if maybe i was doing something wrong but i swear to god the belt mustve shrunk. anybody have any idea what couldve happened? the belt eventually broke as i was trying to get it on again.
Well if your belts are this tight, you’re at risk of shredding it after less than 100 miles. Also, it’s a lot harder on the motor as it puts the axle in constant tension of being pulled toward the wheel. I’ve actually destroyed a motor this way.
Usually the way to tension belts is to loosen the motor in the mount, and then put the wheel on and slide the motor in the mount to tighten the belt.
Anyway, back to your situation, you could try rotating the wheel and the belt while pushing the wheel on to the axle and then should mesh so the wheel can slide in. If not then your tension is probably too tight.
Any wobble in the pulleys can make your belt to tight throughout the rotation. You should be using 15mm belts/pulleys for single. I would also suggest a idler so you don’t have to run the belt to tight.
Pics please, it may be just you can’t get it on the pulley because the belt has to stretch farther then it does when it is on pulleys in order to get on the pulleys if that makes sense. The solution is to loosen your mount if you can, put the belt on, then tighten.