Hello All, Recently a friend and I finished all the maint. scheduled on our CAT 345B Trackhoe. We drained and replaced all the crankcase oil, replaced the old filter, replaced the fuel and fuel/water seperator & all the air filters. Speaking of that, I noticed that one of the swing drive motors was slightly down on the dipstick, so we added some oil through the dipstick and found out the oil filled the entire dipstick tube up ..... I thought I might have added the oil in the wrong location at first, but then after reviewing the maint. manual for this particular unit we did it right, but added too much. It states 500cc, but we added much more. Can this cause any harm? We tried to get as much out of the dipstick tube as possible, but I might have to use some type of suction and tube to get it back to the normal position. Any help would be appreciated. Rob
Open the drain on the little black hose coming out of it and drain it down. It's located on the bottom rear side of the machine just back from the big rotex bearing.
Be aware that alot of times you have to swing a couple times before it reads properly on the dipstick, I know one machine in particular (I think it was a PC200) was bad for that. You would cold start it and have nothing on the stick until it went around a couple times. If you added any oil (even just a tiny bit) before swinging and then checked it always showed way over full.
The purpose of an oil level in a gearbox or similar is that the bearings not get over-lubed. If I remember right then it is the hart of the lower ball (or cone or barrel) but don't pin me on that one.
It won't hurt a thing. It will just expand and push out through the breather if there is one or climb up into the filler tube. The only time to be concerned is if there is no fluid in the box or it over flows all the time. Good Luck!