Maybe we can get some other comments from Greenfield owners who are members here. I don't recall anyone commenting on having to take special measures to get enough belt tension, and I don't believe you should be operating the mower with the automatic tensioner bottomed out (spring fully compressed and tensioner not able to operate normally). However I suggest you keep the old belt - it may be usable as a replacement once this problem is sorted out. I have encountered problems like this on self-tensioning belt drives (not on mowers) when someone had assembled them backwards, and ended up either with the tensioner on the tension (driving) side of the drive pulley instead of the slack (return) side of the drive pulley, or alternatively put the tensioner pulley on the wrong side of the belt itself so it couldn't apply tension. Are you sure the tensioning system is correctly assembled?
Anyone out there with experience of this problem, especially on a Greenfield?
