A Craftsman 42 deck belt could be smoking because it is rubbing against something. There could also be an oil leak. If you can not find the cause, you should take it to be serviced.
you probably have a bad bearing
To install the ground drive belt on a Craftsman model 917.271030, first, ensure the mower is turned off and disconnected from power. Remove the deck by unscrewing the necessary bolts and detaching the belt from the engine pulley and idler pulley. Place the new belt around the engine pulley, then route it through the idler pulley and around the drive pulleys, ensuring it sits properly in the grooves. Finally, reassemble the deck and test the mower to ensure the belt operates correctly.
no it is a belt it fits onto a pulley and enables your fan to turn to keep your engine cooled.
A car engine
It's on the front of the engine and the belt rides on it's pulley, it's the pulley that you have to release to get the belt off.
A pulley and belt is most likely referring to a pulley which is driven by a belt on a vehicles engine. There can be a variety of pulleys e.g. power steering pully on the power steering pump, alternator pulley, water pump pulley, etc. The belt is often called a serpentine belt or accessory belt and wraps around these pulley which run your accessories, if the belt breaks your vehicle will lose the accessories in which it powers. It should be noted that the accessory belt is diffent from the timing belt. The timing belt keeps the engine in time and will not go into details about how it does so as the above answer is sufficient enough for the question asked.
3.8litre
To get the serpentine belt off an engine fan, loosen the tensioner pulley. This pulley is the one with a bolt in a slot that can be adjusted. Then remove the belt.
When looking at the engine from the front, the tension pulley is the only wheel on the drive belt that has the belt on the inside of it. All of the other pulleys have the belt going around the top of the pulley. The tension pulley has a bolt that can be loosened and then tightened to remove the drive belt.
it's an alone pulley mostly found bulted to engine block. the belt can run under or over it
Behind the Timing Belt at the front of the engine. The water pump pulley is the top central pulley on the engine. Removing the Timing Belt is required.
remove drive belt and check all pulley wheels for freedom of movement sounds like a pulley wheel is bad, probably the belt tensioner pulley