5 hours of use and leaked hydraulic fluid on my driveway 🙄

[nyone]

With that big of a leak I dont think you will need special tools to find a leak.
Clean The unit, run it and watch. Not very hard Task.

 

[halfBaked2024]

I just looked at my NH with two different ultraviolet flashlights. AFAIK I do not have any hydraulic leaks. However, we should see some fluid on the rods, at least in a ring at the extent of travel for the seals, and also on the dipstick for the hydraulic fluid. I have used only the fluid sold at the NH dealer and I bought this tractor new, so it's a known system.

Huzzah! The hydraulic fluid glows ghostly greenish white under the 395 nm flashlight. It glows a bit brighter under the 365 nm flashlight, even though this flashlight has less output (it's more difficult to make the shorter wavelength with LEDs).

An ultraviolet light source can make some substances fluoresce: they emit visible light of wavelength longer than the ultraviolet. Thus we can use our eyes to look for the substances. It might be that an infrared source does something interesting, but you'd have to have a special camera to see infrared, and it's difficult for a light source to make a substance emit shorter wavelengths (such as infrared to visible). Oh, sure, anti-Stokes emissions in Raman scattering will do that, but it takes a lot of work to get that to happen, and it's VERY faint.

With these ultraviolet flashlights, just a few other things glowed, such as the orange knob on the gearshift, and the grease on the FEL pivots. Nothing on the cylinders or hoses or control valve glowed. If there were a leak on one of these, I think the flashlights would have helped identify it.

Conclusion: ultraviolet flashlights should be able to show some hydraulic fluid leaks.

Well, I’ll be damned, @SmallChange - I thought these lights were only good for police work and checking hotel room sheets! This is a 365nm UV light I got off Amazon.

 

[5030]

One thing about hydraulic fluid is it is hydroscopic so the fluid in on your driveway concrete will slowly vanish as it gets rained on.

Besides, it's just a driveway outside so a little mark on it is really inconsequential anyway. I don't get **** over stuff like that, never have.

 

[halfBaked2024]

One thing about hydraulic fluid is it is hydroscopic so the fluid in on your driveway concrete will slowly vanish as it gets rained on.

Besides, it's just a driveway outside so a little mark on it is really inconsequential anyway. I don't get **** over stuff like that, never have.

Not all wives feel like we do on this topic, however.

I was making light of my better half in this post - she never even noticed it. Took me a couple tries, but man, I got a good one!

 

[Sid Post]

Thanks for this safety tip! Those hydraulics, being new to me, still raise the hair on the back of my neck. I’ll let you guys know what I find out.

The mechanic where I grew up nearly lost his life to a pinprick hydraulic leak on a tractor. The oil injected into his thumb didn't really hurt until necrosis set in and muscle tissue started dying.

The local Emergency Room doctor was going to amputate his arm since the necrosis was moving up his arm and no one knew what to do or what the problem was. Luckily, someone called the emergency number on the 5-gallon bucket of hydraulic oil and got ahold of someone at Conoco Phillips who clued them in and told them how to stop the tissue death. Thankfully, the mechanic eventually recovered and retained the use of his dominant hand.

 

[SmallChange]

nearly lost his life to a pinprick hydraulic leak on a tractor

High pressure things can be surprising. I spent a lot of my working life around hydraulically driven industrial extruders, many of which operated up around 15,000 psi. Extruders sometimes exhibit uneven flow, where part of the exit stalls and then suddenly starts moving. It's called "spitting". I lifted one of my fingernails partway off by having my hand in the wrong spot once. Extruder spitting sounds a bit like gunfire.
Which got me interested, so the other day I looked up just what the pressures are in actual gunfire, and learned they range up to around 60,000 psi.
But I've worked a bit around higher pressures. A company in Erie that I worked with a little made pressure vessels, custom jobs for industrial processes. They made a cylinder for me that was 18" inside diameter and 24" inside length. It operated at 15,000 psi, and one end was a removable lid, held in place by one big nut. The nut was tightened by an ordinary hydraulic cylinder (4" I think) operating a lever (like a wrench). The load on the nut was five million pounds during operation.
And this company had stock vessels for up to 160,000 psi, with custom vessels even higher.

 

[halfBaked2024]

Worked with it this last weekend and didn’t lose a drop. My conclusion is, I put the dust cap on too tightly on the male hydraulic fitting and the hose completely drained on the driveway. The tractor was positioned in a downward trajectory to facilitate this.

Using that UV light, it’s the only place fluid was “visible”.

 

[dougtrr2]

Appreciate the follow up. Keep an eye on the fitting just in case. I think, rather that the dust cap issue, there may have been a bit of debris holding the fitting open, or a poor seat on the fitting. If it occurs again, I would change out the fitting.

Doug in SW IA