Oil & Fuel 2520 Transmission cap plug came out.

[roush9799]

I was mowing along today. All of a sudden I smell hydraulic oil. I shut the tractor off and look underneath. Hydro oil was pouring out a hole from the bottom front left side of the trans. I looked the part up on jdparts. Must be some sort of drive in plug. There's no threads in the hole. The picture on jd parts wasn't very good and the dealership had to order it. $.83. With the location of the plug, and the way the tractor was leaning when I stopped, it pretty much drained it. I looked for the plug where it started losing oil, but I backed up there and probably mowed over it.

 

[oosik]

Fortunately you were able to stop before any damage - other than a mess & PITA. Over the years working on my equipment I've spent untold hours looking for small nuts, bolts, cotter pins, etc, etc that fall into my lawn and "disappear". If its a special part, this can mean a trip to town - 50 miles round trip. I found a method that sure helps find these parts - a cheap metal detector. I've found "stuff" that has been lost in the grass for over 15 years. Never any gold or money though.

 

[Labrat]

Same thing happened to my buddy with his 4110 last summer. He never found it either.

 

[roush9799]

Well it's fixed. We pushed the plug into the hole e with a finger. Pretty much slid right in. There is a threaded hole right above the plug hole. We drilled a hole in a flat piece of metal so it was long enough to cover the plug hole, just bolted it in with a fine thread metric bolt. Looks to me like this was the intent at the factory to put a cap of some sort over this hole to hold the plug in. But it didn't get done. The threads in the empty hole above the plug had paint in them, so there wasn't anything in this hole before. Jdparts doesn't show anything either, except the plug I lost. I still can't figure out why they used a push I plug there and not a threaded one. Or why is there a drain hole there at all?

 

[beenthere]

Maybe this is just that... a drain hole. Seems I recall a discussion in a previous post about a hole that can be plugged if being in a flooded environment, but that the hole was just to drain excess or leaking oil.. Don't quote me, but vaguely remember something similar.
No idea what might be leaking behind this hole or if it leads directly into a reservoir of oil. Might be something to keep in mind just in case this oil leak is only a symptom of deeper problem. Being as you didn't find the plug, maybe it wasn't there to begin with.

 

[roush9799]

That's what I'm worried about, hopefully there isn't another problem and this just isn't a dust cap. It drained the entire system when it went. I can't figure why they would only have a push in type plug to hold back the hydro oil. Tractor seems to operate just fine still. I mowed about two hours with it since. What sucks is that it just went out of warranty about a month ago. Rear engine seal went out in June and it luckily had 45 days of warranty left then.