How to Change the Belts on an Onfloor OF9S-L

Knowing how to change the belts is an essential process in maintaining or repairing your equipment. No matter how careful you are, mistakes still happen, and parts and equipment eventually break down. When this happens, it’s important to know how to fix complications as they arise. 

What you can expect to learn from this episode:

• How most belts get broken
• How to avoid breaking a belt 
• And, how to change a belt when it breaks.

Reasons why you will break belts:

• Studs that previously held machines, walls and etc…
• Expansion joints/cracks that have a ledge that is greater than 1.8”
• Removing glue, epoxy or overlay
• Add too much weight

Preventative measures you can take to avoid breaking a belt:

• Inspect the job for studs, joints and cracks 
• Use a vacuum that has the recommended CFM
• Clean out inner bowl area regularly

Belt replacement process step by step

Remove Dust Cover

• Loosen the bolts that hold the motor down. 

• Pull the Tension bolt for about half inch 

• Tighten the Front Bolt to hold the motor in place 

• Remove the 4 hex bolts-7/16 socket that is holding the dust cover 

Replace the belts

• Take off the belt. It will just come right off. 

• Install the new belts. Roll them back to the pulley. 

• Loosen the front bolt to tighten the belt

• It will drop the motor and tighten the belt.

Put the Dust Cover back

• Return the dust cover 

• Put the 4 hex bolts back and tighten them  

• Tighten the Tension bolt.

• Tighten the bolts that hold the motor down

You're all set!

If you feel that there is something wrong with your equipment and you can't follow through the steps, you can always contact Onfloor so we can help you out. 

Now that you know how you change the belts of an Onfloor OF9S-L, you can also check our post on an overview of different commercial floor sanders and grinders because floor grinder or sander used can make a huge difference in the quality and finish of a job. You can also check our online store and compare products and find what suits you best. 

You can also check the full video of the tutorial here:

TRANSCRIPTION - HOW TO CHANGE THE BELTS ON AN ONFLOOR OF9S-L

Hi. I'm Travis McCutchen with Onfloor Technologies, coming to you from our Tulsa Oklahoma training center and it's time for Onfloor's Fast and Easy Tech Tips.

In this episode, I'm going to show you how to change the belt in our 9S-L machine. It's newly released. What you can expect to get out of this video would be one, how do belts get broken? Number two, how do we avoid breaking belts? And number three, how do we replace belts when we do break them?

How we break belts.

The number one reason that we found would be related to studs that you find in the floor previously holding equipment or a wall in place. Number two, the cracks and expansion joints that had a rise greater than an eighth of an inch. Then number three, trying to do a really heavy removal, like epoxy or some kind of overlay with just too much weight.

How do we avoid breaking belts?

The best way that we found to avoid breaking belts is to inspect that job before you get the machine on. Inspect the job for these cracks, the studs that can be hidden in a lot of cases, and make sure you identify those and don't hit that area or remove it prior to put the machine on the job. Number two, we would say use a vacuum that provides the adequate CFM to get all the dust out from under the machine so you don't get any unwanted dust up into the chamber, which could deteriorate the belt. And number three, just be careful and not put too much weight on the machine in a heavy removal situation.

Okay. Now I'm going to take you through the belt change process step by step.

First, you're going to use a 9/16 inch wrench or socket to loosen the bolts that hold the motor down. You don't take them off. Just loosen them up. Then you're going to turn that around just so I can show you the tension bolt in the back. This tension bolt right here, that holds the motor tension and we're going to pull that back about a half inch. Then I will turn this back around. You can use a pry bar, but usually the motor will move up without a pry bar.

Then we're going to tighten this bolt here in the front, and that's just going to hold the motor in place and that loose tension while we remove the dust cover. Now we're going to take a half inch socket and remove the dust cover and the four bolts. You saw me take that hose off. That hose connects to the dust board on top of the dust cover, so you need to remove that beforehand. Now you can see we've got the motor up. You can simply walk that belt right off.

Of course, if the belt was broken this would be a really hard and belt to break. You just take your new belt, roll it back over the pulley, and then while it's in this upright position, take your 9/16 inch wrench and loosen this bolt that we tightened a while ago. That just drops that motor back down into place so that we can pull the tension on it when we turn it right side up. We're going to put these bolts back in right quick.

Then we're going to take the machine and tilt it back up, turn it around. All of those motor bolts are still loose, and what we're going to do now is with the 9/16th's socket we're going to pull the tension back. You just run that bolt up to where it touches and that's where the tension was when we started. Then, put this machine around one more time and we're going to tighten up all of these motor bolts. Now the machine is ready to go again.

Thank you for joining us for this episode of Onfloor's Fast and Easy Tech Tips. If you learned something here that you like, be sure to hit the like button and subscribe below, and take a look for new videos that we have coming out.