Bart, I don't know the pulley shaft diameter or the exact length of the belt, but I did a lot of reading and researching about making your own lathe; I'd considered the Vicmarc shortbed before deciding I was too impatient to go through all the construction phases to do it right. (I bought a powermatic, though still may make a dedicated bowl lathe in the future) Anyway, all the self-builds that I saw had the motor platform on hinges. I had something similar when I fixed up my first lathe, an old rockwell-delta. I used 1" wide stainless steel "piano hinge", which allowed for a great amount of weight to be supported by the hinges themselves--a motor of 1.5-3HP weighs quite a bit!