dewalt 735 planer belt replacement

[alan tasoff]

I recently fried a belt on this planer (by turning it on with the workpiece jamming the cutter head). Could not find any useful help anywhere on the net to describe replacement. Company, of course, says return it to the shop (3 week backlog). One post, somewhere, said it goes on with brute force. ("Put your shoulder into it"). That didn't work for me (125 lbs, 75 years old).
I ordered two belts on Ebay for about $ 21.00 each. (A different parts website wanted over twice that). The belts came from Puerto Rico within 5 days. Look identical to original.
Having removed the top cover, the hand crank, and the cover on that side, as well as the little vent on the top and toward the outfeed side, and the chain with the left hand side sprocket attached, and what looks like a little arm attached to a spring, all superficial parts....I was able to fit the belt over the small pulley first. (It is necessary to temporarily put the top cover back on to activate the kill switch to allow the cutter head to turn ...of course with the machine unplugged). Direct stretching did not work. It was possible to get the bottom edge of the belt onto the bottom edge of the cutterhead pulley. Then, looking around for a tool to pry, lever fashion, I finally came upon the solution. It was a 3/4" carving gouge, with a radius similar to the pulley. Using this between the c.h. pulley and the belt, with the concave side of the gouge facing the pulley, it was possible to lever the belt onto the pulley while turning the pulley clockwise.
I was concerned about nicking the pulley, but one could put some of that liquid plastic on the gouge. I didn't think of it until afterwards. I don't think it caused any damage without it.
If I had to do it over again, it would take about a half hour. Hope this helps somebody. It reminds me of a burned out Lexus headlight, which the dealer wanted $ 200 to replace. I was able to get two bulbs for $ 20 on EBay, and it took 15 minutes to install. The bulb is still good two years later.

[Dimitrios Fradelakis]

Thanks for posting this. I'm sure it will help someone.

[Gene Takae]

Thanks or the tip-I have a 735 and may need to replace the belt someday.

[Bill Dufour]

For things like this I like to use a piece of water pipe notched on the end to clear the sheave. Not sure what diameters you are talking about here. hard to find pipe over 1.5"
Bill D.

[Michelle Rich]

I had to replace mine also. Only place I found to get the belt was dewalt. Cost nearly 50.00!!!!!!!! But I had zero issues getting it on. No strain. No problem at all. Maybe it is the belts you used? I'm a 70 yr old woman, so strength played no part.

[alan tasoff]

There was at least a 3/16" gap from the belt to the edge of pulley. The replacement looked totally identical, including an illegible symbol on both the new and the original, next to a similar looking serial number, but the SN's were different. Maybe it's a difference in machining tolerance from one to the other depending on year of manufacture of the planer. At that price difference, it's worth a shot. In any case, doing it at home saved a lot of trouble.

[Charles P. Wright]

I fried my belt the same way. I had my DC and planer on the same circuit and blew the breaker. I didn't raise the machine before turning it on again; and it melted. I found that looking at the instructions for putting in a Byrd head were helpful to figure it out. Contrary to what Dewalt says, It's definitely not worth having a service center do it.

[Fred Falgiano]

I managed to replace the belt on mine last year. Here's what I did (sorry, no pics):

I used a hole saw to cut a plug barely larger than the diameter of the larger pully. I then carved a shoulder into the plug so that I could tap the plug into the inner ring of the pully. I'm not home now, but I recall having to carve out the middle as well.

Now I basically had an extension that I could tap into the pulley. Not useful yet.

Using my ROS (now I have a disc sander that would have worked better) I tapered the outside end of the plug (the part that would stick out when it's tapped into the pulley) so that I could slip the belt over it after threading the belt into the smaller pulley. I also sanded the inside edge so that it would be as flush as possible to the pulley.

Then I was able to put the belt on the small pulley (just barely, not fully) and on the tapered end of the large pulley's extension plug. I slowly rotated the belt and pushed it into the larger pulley. Once it's started, it's pretty easy to coax it on. It took some pressure to keep the plug in place. It wants to pop out under the tension.

I made the plug out of a piece of 2x4, so it was basically free, but this head-scratcher took me the better part of a day to figure out. I won't be home until the weekend, but I think I still have the plug (if I tossed it, I'm an idiot!).

Hope this helps!

[alan tasoff]

Another novel approach to a "very complex repair which can only be handled by the experts".