PIX or Stens Brand

[hanz63]

SO I need to get one of the mega M155368
belts from Stens rather than pay 110$ from the dealer. They now have PIX and I've not used them a lot. Which is the better belt, Stens or PIX? One PIX I got was blue, which I don't like. Are they pretty much standard belt colors?

[bgsengine]

they all pretty much come from the same two or three different belt manufacturers (private label branded) I think the color of the belts is just a gimmick - same as Gates PowerRated belts come in green there's stens (and a couple other brands I forget) that come in blue, and I suspect they all come from Gates factory .... (Just because they seem to be almost the only place that dyes belt fabric?) then there's the PIX (which stens will also re-label) and many OEM MTD belts are coming off the same factory line as where PIX gets theirs from... so, really I think there's way less manufacturers for belts than there are of brands.. and it just comes down to whoever has the better quality control checks... (such as they are)

[hanz63]

Spec belts are all over the map. I used to have a Thermoid source who made belts for OEM as well. Good stuff. They and Stens were about the best. Rotary does good. Oregon not so good. I've seen Amazon belts -Jeremy something that are ridiculously out of spec. Guy asked me to put his on in place of a perfectly good GX21833. He went way down hill. Certain things I'll only do OEM. 90% of the belts I use are OEM as they are generally priced good. JD, not so much. It's like buying a Toro belt anymore. I've seen the occasional PIX belt, just didn't know if as a rule they spec'd out good and didn't look like they covered in Crayola pink or something.

[KE4AVB]

Personally I gave up on after market belts. Way too many coming in either shorter or longer than spec. I just went to sale a Stens belt that I had on the sheft last week. Go thing I measured it before trying to sale it. Stens said it was 1/2 x 106 and when I checked it was 1/2 x 107.