How much hydro oil do you spill?

[daugen]

I had my local Kubota dealer do all the maintenance on my tractor this Spring and part of that included changing out hydraulic fluid filters.
When I got the bill, there was over a hundred dollars for a five gallon pail of SUDT. But they didn't change the fluid?
So I called. And the service manager sent this back to me. These are really good people and I am not complaining about them, but am really surprised.
I can understand a gallon maybe, but five gallons of oil running out? That filter must be at the very bottom...

The 5 gallon pail was used to top off the unit. While the filters get spun off, the system does have a gravity feed fluid loss. As soon as you begin to remove the filters, the fluid begins to pour out of the transmission. The techs race to spin them off and on as quickly as possible but you do end up with a decent fluid loss due to the process (especially if an o-ring ends up being stuck to the housing or the threads for the new filter don稚 catch right away upon installation). Since we run synthetic oil in your unit, we are most certainly hesitant to reuse any fluid that spills from the filer housings for fear of foreign contaminants being introduced to the hydraulic system. I apologize for this inconvenience but it just happens to be a side effect of the design for service on the unit.

I don't know total capacity, but five gallons has to have replaced quite a bit of what was in there. So I guess I got a fluid change to boot.
Is this normal? 135 hours, an annual full service.

thanks. When I do this the next time, and I like doing fluid/filter changes, I sure am going to have a pail at the ready.

 

[TripleR]

My son does our changes and only lost about a quart on the L5740.

 

[C4Ranch]

Wow, it does seem excessive. I will have to ck my owners manual when I get home. I think capacity is somewhere 10<15gal so you'd almost be better off going ahead and changing your fluid if they lose that much.

They need to learn the shopvac trick.

 

[groundcover]

Lost a quart or less on my 5240.

 

[daugen]

I think if one cleans the area near the filter housing well before starting and simply reuse the fluid
carefully collected in a clean container, I don't think any of this would be an issue. But the dealer seems to have some EPA
phobia about cleaning tractors there, no crap down the floor drains or whatever, and I guess therefore if the area is really filthy dirty,
I can see why you wouldn't want to introduce dirt back in the system. which is what you had the filter in there to prevent.
so I see the dealer logic, it just seems that their process has to be really strange to leak all that oil.
Now I'm assuming they are fessing up and didn't knock the pail over...

I would have thought somewhere between a quart and a gallon.
thank you for confirming that I'm not nuts to question five gallons.

 

[k0ua]

Using the vacuum cleaner method on the L3400HST, we lost somewhere between a pint and a quart.. It would have really poured out tho I feel if we had not done the vacuum cleaner thing.

On the last Kioti, filter only change, I used my own Idea of stopping up the vent plug with a screw method, and I lost about 2 ounces of fluid over and above the amount in the filter, and the hydraulic filter hangs straight down and the low part of the sump. I took all the time I wanted, after the initial gush of the fluid in the top area of the filter, it just dripped. I don't see why this method would not work on a Kubota too.

I have talked to tractor mechanics and they use neither the vacuum method or the plugging vent method, they say they just try to hurry up and change it quick..

 

[newbury]

So did they at LEAST give you a picture of the pail to kiss?

How many tractors do they change per 5 gallon pail?

 

[daugen]

How many tractors do they change per 5 gallon pail?[/QUOTE]

my thoughts exactly....like those disposal fees. Lot of disposing going on.
actually to be fair, I should wait and see if a nearly empty five gallon pail comes back to me
with the tractor. These are not dishonest people; I deal with them a lot.

 

[C4Ranch]

Looks like capacity is 11.9gal. Soooo they're assuming over 40% total capacity is lost...

I would ask the service mgr if he really believes that to be true....

 

[daugen]

For 110 bucks or so for a pail of that magic fluid, it sure got my eye.
But then no more than the other 50 and 70 dollar Kubota filters fluttered my eyeballs.
Once a year, but sure not once a year at dealer prices. I'll do the next one.
besides I don't need to do hydro filters that often, not at my hours, and the oil is easy to do.
I'm headed off on a trip and a close friend will be using my tractor. I wanted it totally gone through for him and I didn't have time
to do it.