Old belt blew, trying to replace and running into issues.

Trying to change the belt - ordered a new belt which was verified to fit, ordered the specialized tool. Got the pin in the second hole, tried wrapping the belt and it is still too tense to slide on.

im lost on what to do - seeking advice!

 

One trick that can help is to put the belt over all the pulleys, making the idler pulley the last one. If you have a helper / buddy, you can have him pull back slightly on the tool to take off additional tension while you (very carefully) feed the belt around the last one, being sure not to put your fingers inside the belt path. If that doesn't work, is it possible you're running an aftermarket oversized crank pulley, like an ATI 2%'er, or you got the (slightly shorter) JCW belt and this is a standard S car?

Diagram if it's handy.

Unsolicited advice: "while you're in there" you may wish to change the crank pulley if it's still the factory one to an ATI or other suitable, bullet proof replacement (not OEM). Plenty of threads on here on these things eating themselves and stranding us. Mine went at 50K (probably due to SoCal smog that seems to eat rubber twice as fast).

Mod MINI has the whole procedure - belt starts at 9:15 - on his YT channel here:

 

We changed out the crank pulley, bought a whole new tensioner set up - after a lot of frustrating effort and reading about others experiences I decided to call my local mini dealer and ask for the part number, also asked if it should slide on easily or be difficult after releasing the tension... dude said it should be easy so I knew I had the wrong one then and there.

Compared and the right belt was a little bit longer.. the ebay vehicle verifier was incorrect. Got the right belt yesterday, went on easily, car runs great!