I'm looking for advise after some of my equipment sat in some water after flooding at my farm. I definitely wasn't expecting this, but I had a hay cutter, tedder, batwing shredder, and a JD 6115D in my equipment barn when I had flooding that caused about a 3.5' rise in water. It covered the cutter and tedder and main gearbox on my shredder. The water would have covered front and rear axles on the tractor. The water went down over a three day period. My question is, is it likely that the water got in past seals on everything or am I just better off changing all fluids on all equipment to be safe? What a mess!! Any suggestions? Thanks
Just my opinion but oil and grease are cheaper than repairs. Change the oil and repack any bearings.
Salt water or fresh? If it's fresh, you've got half a chance of drying it out and getting some sort of reliability. If it's salt water, any electrics that got wet will be toast.
I've had a lot of experience with this subject this year. We got 26" of rain in 40 hours in October, some of my customers equipment went under anywhere from 42" to 17' of water. Every one of those axles and gear boxes has a vent in the top, which is also a water fill point. Almost everything I touched had water in it. I'd change the engine and transmission oils on the tractor, too. I would put a wrench on the crankshaft pulley and turn that engine a full turn before I hit the key, too. 3.5' shouldn't be enough to get in there, but if it did, a quick bump of the key is enough to destroy the engine. Even on the stuff where the whole machine went under, I was amazed what good results we got from draining every space, cleaning and relubing. Good Luck, Mitch
Yeah, the water will be everywhere. I had to rebuild a water pump motor once after the thing packed up, quit pumping and got drowned. It was a pain and a mess but it did go again.
Good morning. Thanks for all of the suggestions. It is fresh water so that's a plus. I will just change everything and hopefully all good. Good point mitch504, I'll definitely manually turn the engine before starting the tractor. Thanks
They all have drains on them, unscrew the plug almost all the way and let it drip to see what's in the bottom. Drive it around a minute, then stop and recheck the plugs for water, obviously tighten the plugs before starting. That's for the engine and transmission that didn't have water over their top, anything under water just drain. I doubt you'll repack every bearing on all that equipment. The shaft bearings with zerks are easy, the sealed bearings that you have to completely tear the machine down to get at are the tricky ones. Get a needle zerk fitting and add some grease through the seal. Wheel hubs on farm equipment are a real pain to get all the grease out of, the good news is you won't be making that mess for just one. Maybe put them in an oven on their side with a drip pan at 250, or pressure washer way out behind the shop? The other thing I'd do is run each piece for an hour, regrease everything and run it again.
Thanks Delmer, I know what I'll be doing this weekend