I am planning on changing the oil in the final drives on my D4G. I imagine it's better to use the machine for awhile first and change it warm. Has anyone rinsed the finals out with anything before adding new oil?
We have never flushed our finals unless we had major issues which meant that we had to go into the finals anyway. If the final drive oil looks that bad then we go ahead and change bearings before we have to buy new gears. JCS
The oil looks alright but has 2300 hours on it so time to change. Thanks
We flush them if the oil sample comes back dirty. We just use some 10w. Remember to drain the oil from both the drain plugs. One on the hub and one on the frame.
I changed the final drive oil today in my D3G. For the temperature range here in KY, I used Cat TDTO SAE 50. The oil was a little dark but no particules were visable to me. The inside plugs Lee mentioned are magnetized and there was some material attached to it. It was extremely fine like a paste and the color of anti-seize lubricant (a gray paste). The inside plugs had never been removed and were hard to get out. The paint was not even broken. I had to heat them with a torch. The inside plug has a square in it that took a 3/4 inch drive breaker bar. I had sampled it about 500 hours ago and it was ok. I did not do a sample. I just wanted to be sure the oil was clean. I would guess that it may have never been changed. If it was it was only by draining the outside plug which would have left about two gallons of oil in the drive. Each of my drives took 5 gallons of new oil.
There is alot more pressure ( load ) on your final drives than you would ever think and oil is cheap ( in comparisson to a failure ) always change the oil at mahufactures recommendation or sooner. If you run excavators change the oil at 1000 hrs max ( yes the final drive oil in excavators takes a beating too ) and avoid high speed travel if possible