Mornin' all. I have water contamination in the bevel case and transmission. (moderate) I have the new oils on hand and am about to change. I will flush the cases with diesel, but am considering something more significant. Rather than just pour through and wash I am thinking of topping up to a min level with diesel and running the machine for a minute or so to get more of the **** out of the channeling. Flush with the old filters then change both the oil and filters. Undecided on the provenience of this plan. open to suggestions. Would normally flush with oil, but is a rather not cheap option. cheers, Jack
Another alternative is to drain the oil keeping it clean, dry it, then put it back and run it like you plan. Repeat until the oil is dry enough. I've successfully dried oil in a hydraulic reservoir with just a heater and an air pump, bubbling the air through the hot oil. The transmission oil probably gets hot enough working in your climate to dry pretty quickly with filtered air bubbled through the oil while you work.
Maybe a variation on that. The oil must needs change. It has sat for about 20 years and unsure how long it ran before that. If there is contamination after an oil change then I can could perhaps batch purify the cases as required. --- looking to get as much of the ****** oil out as possible prior to adding the good stuff.
Some of the Cat experts on here can probably talk to you knowledgeably about flushing with diesel for a short period of time. My guess is that it probably would help. Another thing to consider is to first run the machine with the old oil in it enough to get it heated up (with the water mixed in so you have a oil-water gooey emulsion) and then drain. (You may have to top up the old oil with new to make sure that nothing is running low on oil. Also, this may be a bad idea if the old oil is real crap.) This will mix the oil and water and so that possibly more will drain when you dump the mess out. The final. "high tech" thing to consider is to see if you can find oil filters that fit your machine that are "water absorbing" filters. They will strip the oil out of the circulating new oil. Their water holding capacity needs to be checked and possibly you may have to use a couple of filter changes to get all the water out. If you cannot find water absorbing filters to fit your machine you may have to temporarily rig a separate filter with hoses...not sure if this is possible with the 955. Finding water absorbing filters may not be straightforward- your mobile equipment dealer may just say "duh" but some of the industrial hydraulics suppliers should be familiar with them. I had to do this on my older Case backhoe-- the hydraulic oil was turning white with water before I finally found that rainwater was getting into the system by running past the boom lift cylinder seals. Had to change out the oil return filter housing for a spin-on type (Donaldson filter). It worked like a charm, and cleaned up the oil-- but had to change the cylinder seals to make the fix permanent. YMMV! Jon.
Jack - If you fill the transmission with diesel and run it, the diesel is pumped all through the system - through the torque converter, and through the steering clutch control hydraulics (SCCH). It will be impossible to get the residual diesel out of the TC and SCCH - which will amount to quite a few litres. It will be pumped and mixed into the new oil when you start it after the oil refill, thus diluting the new oil. If the tractor has been operated with the old oil, then that means all the crap and water has been circulated through the TC and SCCH - in which case, pumping diesel through the system would be a better idea. But if the tractor hasn't run for 20 years and hasn't been started, then simply draining the oil and flushing diesel straight through the transmission/bevel gear compartments, is a better idea. A tractor that hasn't moved for 20 years is likely to have components that have been above the oil level, suffer from serious corrosion. That means gears and bearings. Oil drains right off vertical surfaces after about 3-6 mths, and then the thin oil film left, generally dissipates not too many months afterwards - thus leading to corrosion on exposed components. I have had a Cat Field Serviceman relate a story to me, about how he got a call one day from a farmer, who had only just pulled his Cat D4 ag tractor out of his shed a couple of days prior, to go ploughing. The D4 had been pulling well, and suddenly the drive to the tracks just stopped. The engine ran, and the transmission was turning, but the tracks did nothing. The Serviceman said he pulled the rear cover off the bevel gear compartment and was stunned to find a pile of teeth stripped off the bevel gear - and those teeth were all exceedingly rusty. He told me when they dismantled the D4 bevel gear, they found the one half of the gear that was below the oil level was in perfect condition - but the teeth on the top half of the bevel gear, that had been out of the oil, were all rusted so badly, they had lost nearly half their thickness, in some places! And this location wasn't some high-humidity, swampy, tropical area by the sea, as you might expect - it was in the dry and relatively low humidity area of W.A.'s inland Southern wheatbelt. And the D4 had only been "resting" in the shed, without being started or used, for maybe 4 or 5 years at the most. So I'd pull as many covers as you can on that 955K, and check out what the corrosion damage looks like.