No I have not. Maybe I will do that or wait till end of season. It only has 130ish hours on it IIRC, maybe 140. What is the recommended hour time to change that oil?
No I have not. Maybe I will do that or wait till end of season. It only has 130ish hours on it IIRC, maybe 140. What is the recommended hour time to change that oil?
That I don't know. Seems that you might not be very bad shape on that though with only a few hours. From what I gather long mows (2+ acres), hills (some of the suggestions are to mow them first before the trans builds a lot of heat) and pulling trailers loaded with rock and such are what builds the heat. These transmissions actually have the torque to do these things, but they lose torque due to the oil heating up, things go south when that happens and slippage starts. And it seems that JD and Tuff Torque recommend completely different things. Hmmm..
From what I could gather those that never have problems are mowing an acre or less and don't use it for anything but mowing. If you mow an acre or so AND it's pretty flat I'd probably wait until the end of the season or the start of next. If you are mowing a lot of acreage or don't know the usage history before you got it, I'd do it now but that's just me.
Here's a thread on the JD forum discussing oil changes
Don't know about riding mowers - have you checked the owner's manual? - but on my CC Yanmar tractor, the recommended interval is 50 hours. More frequently if you operate under dusty conditions or with heavy loads.
I mow 1.5 acres and its flat other than out by the road and thats not very steep at all. I'll try mowing that first as you said and see if I can tell a difference. If the oil getting hot and viscosity dropping is the issue, I would think using a 40 weight oil would make an improvement?
Tuff Torque says that a 5W50 is "optional". At temp it's a 50W, so yes a heavier oil would help. Hit that link I put in my post above. At 1.5 acres it seems you are running the perfect tractor, not too big a job at all for it. If you are certain you are noticing it slowing down ought to look into it, an oil change may be all you need. Some say they machine won't even go up their hills and at that point their response from techs and others who've been through the transmission ordeal is that the trans is toast. Yours sounds like it isn't at that point yet from what I can gather.
This sucks I really wanted that X300 I found. But I don't want to have the trans issue hovering and waiting to strike. That mower was mowing a 2.5 acre plot so I decided to pass, but it was really nice, looked brand new.
I would recommend taking the rear fender pan off (6 maybe 8 bolt) and pressure washing the transaxle as the top cooling fins are a magnet for dirt and grass clippings, also check the make sure the cooling fan is not stripped out or missing any blades. I change my trans axle fluid every spring when I give the machines get their major service for the year and have never hand any issues.
FYI, changing the fluid in the K46 requires you removing the transaxle from the tractor and flipping over and draining it out through the top. Lots of fun. I have heard that that somebody drilled and tapped the bottom one to make it somewhat more serviceable but I can't locate the thread at the moment.
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Good information, I hadnt thought about that.
thanks
Years ago, I used to work on riding mowers and wrenched on many of the hydrostatic and CVT drives. The CVTs, when they wore out, were very easy & inexpensive to replace. The hydrostatics were a lot of trouble when something broke internally and were so expensive to replace that the mower was essentially junk at that time.
Engine oil: 1st 8, then 100 or annually
Transmission oil: 1st 50, then 200
I mow 3 acres (~90 minutes mowing time) and plan to change it twice as often just because those numbers sound high to me. It's kind of like how I change the oil in our cars at 3-5K even though the manual says 15K.
Here is a pic of what I use to mow/work my piddly .5 acre; definitely overkill but they both will outlast me and be handed down to one of the kids at some point. Left one is a X series diesel, full hydraulics, 3 point & FEL and the right one is a LX277 AWS which gets the bulk of the mowing chores.
