Oil & Fuel How Much Oil is in the Tank on a PT425?

[coolconnection]

I had to drain mine when I put a new hydraulic pump on my PT 425 and I didn't get 10 gallons out of it. Probably more like 7 or 8. I filled a 5 gallon bucket and partially filled a 5 gallon gas can (both were extremely clean of course) just out of the reservoir. I tell ya if you don't drain the tank the hoses just keep draining. The pumps and lines must hold quite a bit plus gravity pushes it out as well. I know the old hydraulic pump held a lot of oil, I had to drain it to send it back to PT to be fixed.

 

[toy]

redzebra you are right some of the ten gallons is dispersed out in the system. When my wheel motor went down I lost a lot of oil before I could get it jacked up and it took about 6 or 7 gallons to refill it. At pt they told me that I hadn't lost all of it and they were right. If you wanted to get all of the oil out after you drained the tank then you would have to take the cylinders loose and disconnect the hoses and if the cylinder was retracted then you would have to pull the rod out and then push it back in, you might rig up gizmoes to hook up air to aid in doing that but I believe I would just do it by hand. Then you would have to loosen up the hoses to the pumps and turn the pumps manually to get the oil out of them. I wouldn't go to all that trouble unless I had major contamination in the oil. On the cylinders if they were extended you would do the reverse of them being retracted, I forgot to mention that. I refilled mine with regular hydraulic oil. On the filter when I am changing the filter I first fill up the new filter and let it sit for a while while I am doing other things. The filter will soak up some of the oil and then I refill the filter and then that way I don't get too much air in the system. On my 425 the filter is located in a good place that lets me do that easily, but some of your pts might not have them that conveniently located.

 

[Red Zebra]

redzebra you are right some of the ten gallons....

It's not that I'm lazy but that's too much work for me. I plan to just use full synthetic when changing the filter and topping off the tank from here on out.

 

[SpringHollow]

That is not an effective way to switch as mentioned previously. I could never switch to synthetic - a broken hose and 20+ gallons gone. That would hurt!!!

Ken

 

[toy]

Myself, I have no intentions of changing out the hydraulic oil in my pt to anything other than what it has in it, synthetic might be much better and give a longer life, but you have to consider the extra expense of that change and a busted hose would be a big loss. If you intend to completely evacuate the oil that is in the machine and completely use synthetic oil you would have to figure out a way to get the oil out of the entire machine and the way I described is one way to do that, might not be the only way though. If a person wanted to add synthetic oil back to the machine by refilling the filter plus what little oil they lost between changes then over a period of time the synthetic oil would increase slightly with each oil change, but how many oil changes would it take to actually make that much difference? I would say it would take a very long time unless their machine leaked a lot and if their machine leaked a lot then you would have to consider if it was worth trying to prolong the life of a part that is on it's way out.

What would be the difference in price between the synthetic oil and the oil that came in the machine? I am just curious, I get the impression that it is quiet a bit more but I haven't checked that out. Tell me that it is a whole lot so I won't even entertain the thought of doing it.

 

[Red Zebra]

Myself, I have no intentions of changing out the hydraulic oil.

ok, it's alot! If your PT leaks oil like my truck, you always have fresh oil because before you crank it each day you check the gas and fill 'er up with oil and you're good to go! :thumbsup:

 

[MossRoad]

Myself, I have no intentions of changing out the hydraulic oil in my pt to anything other than what it has in it, synthetic might be much better and give a longer life, but you have to consider the extra expense of that change and a busted hose would be a big loss. If you intend to completely evacuate the oil that is in the machine and completely use synthetic oil you would have to figure out a way to get the oil out of the entire machine and the way I described is one way to do that, might not be the only way though. If a person wanted to add synthetic oil back to the machine by refilling the filter plus what little oil they lost between changes then over a period of time the synthetic oil would increase slightly with each oil change, but how many oil changes would it take to actually make that much difference? I would say it would take a very long time unless their machine leaked a lot and if their machine leaked a lot then you would have to consider if it was worth trying to prolong the life of a part that is on it's way out.

What would be the difference in price between the synthetic oil and the oil that came in the machine? I am just curious, I get the impression that it is quiet a bit more but I haven't checked that out. Tell me that it is a whole lot so I won't even entertain the thought of doing it.

Synthetic oil is about $7.00 a quart right now. So 7 x 4 = 28 dollars a gallon times 10 gallons = $280.00.

Regular oil is about $3.00 a quart right now. So 3 x 4 = 12 dollars a gallon times 10 gallons = $120.00.

What you gain in performance and life extension of components is unknown. It would certainly not hurt to top off the reservoir with synthetic after filter changes. For my tractor, I have changed the filter 8 times since new, so I would have about 20% synthetic in there by now. At today's prices that would have been $56.00 spent over 9 years.... I think I could have handled that. :laughing:

 

[BobRip]

The performance of my PT422 with 5W30 was very poor when warm. I am a lot happier with it now with 15W50 Mobil 1. I was considering a new PT425 to get extra wheel motor torque. So I guess I saved about $10,000.

 

[toy]

Thank you MR for saving me a lot of entertainment thoughts. Mr replacing the quart of oil that you loose with a quart of synthetic oil if it is compatible with what is in it won't hurt . By the way Moss you wouldn't have 20% synthetic oil in your machine either because the second oil change 1/40th of the oil that was lost would be synthetic oil and you replaced it with 1 quart of synthetic oil and the next time you changed oil ...uh....well....uh I plead hillbilly on you lol.

 

[RegL]

I changed to synthetic several years ago and here's my take. If your going to do much field mowing on hilly terrain in hot weather, than the change over is definitely worth it. Otherwise, the original oil works fine.