Change Filters or not? Rotella oil?

[Gary Fowler]

I agree with John Thomas, change your engine oil (recommended once a year regardless of hours) but wait on the hydraulic till you have ran it the 50 hours. You want to catch all the early wear particles and any machining particles. The oil wont wear out in the hydraulics like engine oil unless water contaminated and as long as it is clear and not milky it is good to use.

 

[Gary Fowler]

As for engine oil, any good brand of diesel motor oil will work for you. It is likely a waste of money for you to put full synthetic in your tractor if you only run 20-50 hours per year. You only get the benefit of synthetic if you put lots of hours or miles on your engine between changes. Most any oil will work just as good as synthetic if you only run them 20 hours a year because you need to change oil in the engine at least yearly. We ran tractors in the 70's 10,000+ hours without problems on regular 10w-40 before synthetic was even a dream and oil additives were no where near as good as now.
With that said, I myself have been using Rotella T6 but I think I will go back to T5 when I run out of T6 on my tractors because I just don't put the hours on the engine. I will still put it in my automobiles though, I only change them when the oil sensor tells me too which is about 7-8K miles

 

[JerryK]

If you want to go synthetic... go synthetic in your chassis grease.. That's where it really shines.. Still have all the original front end parts on my over ten year old Dodge, with a big heavy Cummins and a heavy cast iron six speed sitting on top of it. [ third set of shocks ]