BX23 - What is this?

[AMR]

I posted a few days ago that my BX23 is leaking hydraulic fluid around the rear somewhere. I mowed last night and had to run nearly WOT for about 3 hours to get the grass cut and bagged, it really looks good. I would guess that I lost about a teaspoon of hydraulic fluid in the process. Needless to say I was very upset seeing hydraulic fluid all over the back of the tractor.

I took the opportunity to look for a where the leak was eminating and it appears to be coming from directly under the seat. If you look under the seat you will see what looks like a red cap sitting on a washer. I always thought that this was an operator presence switch, but it is obviuosly not, silly me.

Does anyone know what this is? Might this be a vent of some type? Could my hydro fluid be a little overfull and pushing itself out of this?

 

[rbarker]

Does anyone know what this is? Might this be a vent of some type? Could my hydro fluid be a little overfull and pushing itself out of this?

It is the hydraulic cylinder breather. I would think that an overfull hydro unit might cause some seepage, but it's just a guess on my part. I just checked mine and found it appears to have vented a very small amount over the past three years so I would think that some kind of venting there is normal.

 

[art]

Seeing that you have a BX23 and the problem is new have you been digging in wooded area's? The sub-compacts all have little fans attached to the driveshafts to help cool the transmissions. These fans are plastic and often limbs can go up and break off the fins.

 

[SkyPup]

Losing a teaspoon of hydraulic fluid for every three hours of WOT operation is not a problem.....

 

[alpo]

I had something like this happen as well. Only for me it seemed like A LOT of fluid leaked from the same area, I noticed this by seeing a trail of drops on the ground as I finished mowing. Of course I immediately parked the beast and looked for the issue, but only found the rear of the mower (Under the seat) covered in fluid along with lots of lawn clippings. I let it sit till the next day, pressure washed it, and ran it but found no leakage - I have run it several times since also with no re-occurance. I checked the levels which were found fine, and I had not changed fluids for some time prior to that. The cap you mention is in the area I saw fluid so I HOPE it was spurious and not a real issue. I had noticed that the entire assembly gets quite hot during operation and while the fan appeared entact the last time I checked it I will check again. Of course even just a quart of fluid looks like a lot when it's coming from your ~$14000 lawn mower just out of warrantee.

 

[AMR]

AMEN, anything leaking out of my $20,000 lawnmower bothers me. I had the dealer pick it up this morning, I hope to hear Monday and I will let you all know what they say. They were not as alarmed by all of this as I am, suprise.

I have found now how naked you feel without this machine. I use it to do so much so often that now that it is gone I feel anxious, like I have stuff to do but can't, that is the drawback with one machine that does it all, but then again, I can't afford more than one so I may as well have one that does do it all.