How to Adjust Snowmobile Belt Deflection

Hi. I’m Len Groom. Welcome to Tech Tips. One of the easiest things that you can do to ensure that your snowmobile is performing at its peak level would be to make sure that your belt deflection is proper.

Here’s how you do that. The first thing you want to do is check your existing belt deflection. Put the straight edge between the clutches, and in about the center you want to pull down on your belt. And the proper adjustment for this belt is an inch and a quarter of space between your straight edge and your belt.

When we check the actual belt deflection on this belt, you can see we’re about an inch and a half, so we need to adjust it. That means that this belt is too loose, and that could affect the performance of your snowmobile. So to adjust your belt you need to loosen the jam nut on your secondary clutch. Use your Allen wrench.

Turn the adjuster counterclockwise which will bring the sheaves together. You want to grab the belt and roll it through the primary and through the secondary. You can see the belt rises in the secondary sheaves, and that will cause it to be tighter. We’re going to take a second measurement, same process.

Pull down on the belt. You can see that we’re about five-eighths of an inch, which means we’ve gone too far. We need to make another adjustment. To make that adjustment, we’re going to turn our adjustment screw in the opposite direction.

That means we’re going to go clockwise. That means we’re going to push the sheaves apart. As you’re doing that, you’ll see the belt drop in the sheaves. This indicates that we are loosening the belt.

The lower it rides, the looser the belt will be. We go ahead and make our adjustment. We’re going to check it again, and you can see that we’re very close. It might be just a little bit too tight.

We want to make one more small adjustment. We check it for the last time. We find that we are at an inch and a quarter, which is spec for this snowmobile. Belt deflection on this sled is good.

Once you’re finished, you need to tighten your jam nut. But what’s very important is that you insert the Allen wrench first to hold your adjustment and then tighten the jam nut. If you just tighten the jam nut, you’re going to turn the adjuster at the same time, and you’ll throw your deflection off. There you have it.

Just a few simple steps to make sure that belt deflection is correct. Your sled will perform at the top of its game. Thanks for watching. We’ll see you next time.