Tiller Water in Gear Box -Tiller First Choice RTO4-56

[JeffandTamara]

I read some posts on a similar problem on a Rotary cutter gear box. This gear box has water in it and seems quite a bit of rust. No external leaks are visible, but I couldn't detect any gear lube either, just rusty looking water. No drain on bottom that I can see or is noted on the parts diagram. I would like to disasemble, but don't really know how to take it apart. The 90 shaft goes to the chain drive and the housing seems to be bolted in with no way to take off that I can see. Thus far I have used a suction pump to suck out as much of the gunk as I could get, then did a couple of interations of filling with keorsene and pumping out. Still getting a lot of brown gunk. I left the gearbox full tonight and will let it soak... and maybe I'll get someone with a better idea on how to proceed.

Also the lube in the chain drive has a sight glass with a "spinny thing" in it. It looks like there might be gear oil in there as well. No drain plug, I guess the only way to change the fluid is to break the seal on the entire chain drive housing. Seems like a pretty poor design, Kind of late in the game for that observation... Any Ideas???

 

[5030]

I ran into the same scenario on my 60 foot grain auger. I took the gear box off the unit and inverted it and let it drain a couple of days. refilled it with kerosene and some 10 weight oil, operated it with no load for 5 minutes drained and inverted it again. Seems as though the water got in through the fill plug/breather. It takes very little water to contaminate gear oil and turn it milky.

 

[N80]

Someone mentioned in the other thread about putting a balloon around the breather. That might be the best bet. Presumably as the gear box warmed up, air could be vented out the breather and into the balloon and then sucked back in when it cooled down. This would possibly help with rain and condensation too. I may give that a try. Surely the balloon would leak or bust before a seal blew out.