HELP! Oil is pouring out of my breather tube!

[BigFatJoby]

I own a New Holland TC45D that I bought used with questionable hours on it (hour meter cable is broken, it will spin either direction depending on the RPMs I am running). The tractor has a hyrdostatic transmission and has a New Holland FEL attached to it. Yesterday I used it to do some pretty heavy front end loader work digging out the root balls of 3 oak trees and bunching up a burn pile. Once I lit my pile I went to start mowing. I engaged the PTO, throttled up and when I turned around to check my cut height I saw a thin line of oil on the ground. It took some hunting before I found oil POURING out of the engine breathing tube. I shut down the engine and checked the oil level and it was way up on the dip stick. (I drained out the extra oil last night and I was almost a gallon high!) My first thought was that I had a stuck injector but when I checked the oil I had no diesel smell. In fact, the oil looks particularly clean compared to last week when I used it to bush hog.

So here is my question. Is there anyway for oil from some other sump (transmission, hydraulics, etc) to end up in the engine? I checked it again this morning and the engine oil level is high again just from sitting. Where ever it is coming from it's leaking into the engine not forcing its way in under pressure. Thanks in advance for everyones help. If there happens to be a similar thread I could read up on let me know, I'm not the best with the thread search.

 

[WTA]

I don't know your tractor at all but if it is like my NH then the hyd pump is on ths side of the engine block and if the seal on it goes bad then it can fill the engine sump up with hydraulic oil. It happened once on an old farmall I had. You might want to pull the hydraulic pump and look at it. After you fix it then change your engine oil and filter too. I doubt it hurt anything in your engine unless the hydraulic system is real dirty.

 

[coldkubota]

This is a fairly common problem. It's happened to me twice on my Kubota B1550. The most likely cause is the seal on the hydraulic pump between your pump and engine. The first time I replaced the seal ($8.50). Simple fix however the the shaft showed some wear where the seal runs. It lasted a year and recently failed again. This time I changed out the pump. I'm not sure how your pump is mounted on a NH but the kubota is not difficult just ackward to get to.

 

[WTA]

Don't they have speedy sleeves up there in Canada? I usually put them on a little different by first filling the groove with JB weld and then driving the sleeve on. I've never had one go bad again after that. The JB weld in the groove will keep the new seal from wearing into the speedy sleeve in the same spot. NAPA usually carries them down here in about any size imaginable.

 

[JerryG]

It could be from the hydraulic pump seal or from the fuel pump Smell the oil that you took out to see if it has fuel in it.

 

[dbdartman]

If the engine oil level is going up, some other liquid level is going down. Find that first.

I can also see it being the hydraulic pump shaft seal.

 

[BigFatJoby]

Wow! First off thank you all for such quick responses. I checked all of my fluid levels and my hydraulics are low. The engine oil does not smell like fuel so I am hoping it's the hydraulic pump, it sounds like a much easier fix than what I was dreaming up. Is there anything I could have done to prevent this (did I do something wrong to make this happen)? Or did the seal just wear out? I'm going to try and tackle this some time this week after work or next weekend. I have 5 acres of bahia that need mowing in a bad way. Whatever I do, I'll try and grab some photos and post them along with an update.

 

[Soundguy]

Hyd shaft seals blowing out can just 'happen' but. things like HYD QD's coming undone can help them along... sticky relief too..e tc. Actually a couple different ways. I'm not familiar with your machine or hyd pump setup so don't even want to guess how yours blew out.. etc.

soundguy

 

[jinman]

If you look down in the Case forum, you will see somebody else with a similar problem that happened recently. It appears the seals on some hydraulic pumps on our model tractors are subject to failure.

The NH repair manual says the pump is a non-servicable unit replacement, but I think Neil Messick sells a seal kit, so you should be able to repair your hydraulic pump.

 

[BigFatJoby]

Well here's the update. The hydraulic pump shaft seal was in fact cracked allowing my hydaulic oil to leak into my engine. Bad news is that Ford/New Holland decided that this pump is not rebuildable. A replacement can be bought new however...for $650! The pump shows virtually no wear so I'm putting together my own rebuild kit. I checked Messicks but they are closed at the moment and I can't figure out how to search for this specific oil seal. I guess I will just have to wait until tomorrow to see if they do have a rebuild kit. I have already purchased the O-Rings I need but I struck out on the oil seal. It is metric, 19mm x 31.7mm x 8mm. I tried to sneak my on a 19mm x 32mm x 8mm but that extra 0.3mm just wasn't having it. So, I'm now trying to track down someone who makes (or will make) the correct oil seal. In the mean time, I converted metric to inches and came up with something VERY close to .75 x 1.25 x 0.315. Oil seals are a whole lot cheaper than a new pump so I'm willing to try a couple until I get things right.