You definitely have to take the reel down through the playfield. It's kind of a pain but you will see how to do it if you go slow.

Reel comes down through the playfield. Also, I wouldn't use one of the correct belts for it. use a rubber instead. The original ones were a crappy eurothayne or something and they get brittle and hard very quick.

Clay always replaces them with a 3" rubber ring I think. Can't remember the exact size, but that's what I did on mine when I replaced it. If you are a Pinball Ninja subscriber he has a video or tutorial I think showing the replacement of it too.

I have replaced mine with rubber ring. It works even better than original belt.

Pinball Resource sells the correct replacement part. I have serviced several FTs and Hurricanes for a route operator and regular rings are terrible. In my experience it is entirely unreliable and slips like crazy. I would never install a rubber ring in place of the correct part. That is just dumb.

Good to hear. I have used, and am currently using, a rubber ring. It's not the best solution. They go bad every 2-3 years and take a few days to break into the correct tension (it misses ejects). Next time I will use the urethane and be done with it for a much longer time.

I have had 2 different FT machines and replaced with the original replacement belt both times and ZERO problems afterwards.

+ 1

For the rubber ring camp.

Seasoned operators and Clay aren't wrong about this.

Seems like pinball Ninja did one of those a while back

Another cause of belt slippage can be the plastic pulley that the belt sits on. This needs to have a flat side inside for gripping the drive shaft. If the centre is rounded out it will cause the belt and pulley to slip. This can cause confusion ( for me at least) as its not easy to see happening and with tension on the pulley can still work intermittently and may look like the belt slipping, especially when it first starts to wear.
Hope this helps someone coz it had me stumped for a while..

Routing a fishtales had two of the urethane rings snap on me.

3" rubbers are available in a pinch at lowes in the plumbing section. For 59cents I will keep using the 3" rubber.