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I have a 2019 Rouge with a 72 inch deck. It calls for a 5/8 x 204.75 inch belt. The mower is a little over a year old and I found after not too many hours I was at the end of the threads for the tensioner adjustment. A 5/8 x 203 Kevlar belt is easily available while a 204 is not. I feel like I could easily do a 204 inch but not sure of the geometry involved with a 203 inch belt and hate to order online only to have to send back. Any best guess or advice is appreciated .....

No problems with a 0.5% reduction in length .

Thanks for the reply. By that math I come up with a 1 inch reduction possible. I'll see what I can find..Thanks again

Just be aware if buying after market belts they can be shorter than the labelled specs. It is the main reason I had to quit buying after market belts. One vendor was sending belts up to 2" shorter in the B (5/8) belts. No wonder I was having so much problems installing belts.

It kinda unusual to find one that is longer than the label spec but does happen. I just measured a Stens 265-106 here that was to be 106" OC and it is 107". It was even CC OEM spec'd.

The lesson I learn ws not to fully trust the label specs and to actually measure the belts.

DC10Drvr said:

I have a 2019 Rouge with a 72 inch deck. It calls for a 5/8 x 204.75 inch belt. The mower is a little over a year old and I found after not too many hours I was at the end of the threads for the tensioner adjustment. A 5/8 x 203 Kevlar belt is easily available while a 204 is not. I feel like I could easily do a 204 inch but not sure of the geometry involved with a 203 inch belt and hate to order online only to have to send back. Any best guess or advice is appreciated .....

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Buy an O.E.M. belt from a Bad Boy Dealership (not a box store or the internet).....trouble can await anything else!

It requires a little common sense.
I regularly fit the wrong length belt to customers mowers.
Some times it is accomodate wear which makes the correct belt too loose.
Some times it is because a near size belt is 1/2 the price of the OEM length belt
Any one with a brain would realize that 204.75" is the result of a brain dead engineer plugging values into a belt company app which spits out a stupid size.
Over 200" a difference of 0.75" is meaningless so they could have used a standard 204" belt but that would make it hard to justify a $ 200 price tag .
If the deck has an adjustable tension spring then probably a 200" will work just fine with the spring backed off a little and be 1/2 to 1/3 the price of a 204.75" belt.
However what is important is the belt construction.
Transmission belts are not built to take the sudden shock of an electric clutch and a lot of manual PTO belts are similarly not shock proof.
A belt that has a highly serpentine run usually can not be replaced with one that was designed for nothing tighter than a 90 deg bend around a 5" pulley