It has the slip-off blade driver/pulley assembly. Once you remove the blade and roll the belt off the pulley and remove the driver, the belt is free on the front and may be easier to manipulate off the rear pulley. Watch out for a little spacer that may be inside the driver which could fall out. You could easily cut the old belt, but that wouldn't help you to figure out how to install the new one.

That guide and its mounting screws are a bit of a pain. I'm not sure if this is the easiest way for your specific machine- but disassembling the axle on the housing side and dropping the shaft low enough to deal w the guide screws is how I have done it in the past.

Here is a quick video. I am not sure if yours is exactly like the one in the video. But It gives you a good visual as to how to go about it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbA9vS_eI6Y

Sincere thanks to saxman 1, tomplum and bob_k

I misled saxman by asking how to remove belt when I really wanted how to put the new one past the guard.
tomplum alerted me to removal screws, but now I need to know what sort of driver will remove them.
Thanks to bob_k's video that showed a human removing the screws. Different mower, but no matter.
If any of you three know what driver removes screws, post or email me. This is a wonderful site.

Neat video. Why is it all the ones I work on aren't that clean? I haven't done one this season, but my first guess is a T15. Get a feel for how tight the screws are in the plastic. They strip easy and of course since the cable pulls directly on the bracket they retain- they need to be solid.

I wasn't misled - I thought it may be worth a shot if you didn't know how to make some working room by at least removing the driver/pulley. I understand that you can't easily get the belt out of the rear guides. I have two Toro/Lawn-Boy mowers with this arrangement but evidently have been lucky because I haven't had to replace a belt yet, One is a 2004 and the other a 2008. Normally the belts last quite a while - you had an unlucky occurrence. The guides are to prevent the belt unshipping from the rear pulley, and they do a great job! :(

My 20384 is fixed. Thanks to everyone who helped. I do have a couple of observations about the belt that almost ate my lunch.

The belts, configured to slip, wear out quickly. Further, small sticks or rocks can lock the rear pulley and wear out the belt in seconds. While my replacement only cost me about $12, I had owned the mower less than a year. The small dealership where I bought it tries to keep six in stock. Replacement is with ordinary tools, but with much desassembly. I don't know if I would buy another.

The Toro 'Personal Pace' and 'Variable Speed' drives are the simplest, most efficient walk-behind mower drives yet devised and tend to last for many years. The original concept was developed by Lawn-Boy many years before Toro owned that brand. The belts are designed to be tough as they constantly slip. The only recurring problem is minor 'belt-slap' that you hear and feel from time to time. I've noticed this mainly on Honda mowers with a somewhat similar system where you will get a shudder when slowly depressing the drive bail, but they don't use that particular system anymore. With the Toro/Lawn-Boy system, feathering the bail produces slower drive speed with smooth action.
I've used my mowers to mulch leaves with small sticks for years without picking up a rock or stick that caused any trouble, but after all it is a lawn mower, not a woodlands mulcher. Thanks to you reporting your problem, I'll be more careful when going into the wooded areas with them in the future. When I had a LB 10550 (with 'Easy Stride', same as 'Personal Pace') in the past, the only trouble I had with mulching/mowing leaves/sticks was debris would get into the wheel gears and stop the wheel. This was because the plastic debris shield over the wheel gears was not 'full-circle' like the later Toro/LB mowers.

How much does Toro pay you? The drive belt on Super/Recycler mowers seem PURPOSELY designed to be difficult (I am a mechanical engineer and machine designer). The transmission uses Star drive screws on the bottom and 3 square drive screws on the top (the drive belt guard side). Two of the square drive screws are accessible while the third one can't quite be accessed... unless you carefully "cock" it in the screw at a slight angle. The blade guard serves no purpose except to dampen any belt "slap" at engagement. After twice spending two hours replacing broken belts... I removed the belt guard. Ever since belt replacement is a 10-15 minute "snap."

Better sign up for a engineering refresher class . No reverse engineering feat required to remove a few Torx-15 fasteners to enable removal & replacement of the belt , I guess you engineers are not use to getting your hands dirty ! lol.

Sure! I enjoy ”engineer” jokes, and Aggie jokes(I are one). But building a machine that requires extensive disassembly to perform basic maintenance does not result in an enduring product (as this discontinued item demonstrates). My Super Recycler with its aluminum hull is beautiful and I’ve had it for many years. But I’m kinda unlikely to purchase another Toro because it is a time-hog to maintain.

No offense, and I like Houzz comraderie, but Torx “fasteners” are not involved in belt/guard R&R. The fact that Toro use both Torx and square-drive screws on the same part is only the beginning. To R&R a Toro Super Recycler (TSR) drive belt requires removal of blade & wings, engine-pulley, engine-belt pulley, engine-belt-pulley guard, battery removal, battery-box removal, mower debris guard removal, molded plastic rear-bag adapter, pulley-tunnel guard, and transmission-belt pulley guard.

With a SINGLE design change, two-thirds of those items would be unnecessary! It’s not a case of ”bad” design… just an example of the difference between “basic” design and “great” design. If this maintenance task had been examined before production, it would have been obvious that a very small shift in the aluminum mower deck mold (less than 0.2 inches) would allow the TSR transmission to rotate a full 180 degrees (actually 360 if you needed to). This one ”attention to maintainability” item would reduce blade change time to less than 15 minutes… simultaneously reducing maintenance-induced stress, wear, and failure on all of the components that were R&R’d for no reason other than accessing the belt.

I didn’t start out as an engineer… I was an A&P mechanic on C-5A aircraft. In Vietnam over 250 lives were lost when a “Baby Lift” evacuation plane crashed when the rear cargo door locks failed. We found that the door locks had a 34-cent bushing within a 34-part assembly would fail ( 34 & 34) is how I remember it so many years later. Replacing the bushing required near-complete disassembly of all 7 locks (one side of the cargo ramp) and a three hour ”rigging” of the lock hooks.

I learned many things in maintenance; but my C-5 experience convinced me that I needed to be an engineer.

Have a great day and if you ever have the ”pleasure” of ACTUALLY changing the belt on a TSR… I wish you patience and agile fingers.