Dealer called today. I stopped down to see what was done etc.
They called Kioti to find the tractor hydraulics / HST system is vented underneath the seat -- there is a tube that comes up that looks like an upside-down letter "J" just like the air vents seen on septic leaching fields and gas line vents I've seen coming out of the ground at least around here.
Turns out a mud wasp built it's tiny nest that sealed that vent off perfectly!!!
So I'm just amazed the chances of that happening etc. My tractor is garaged, but we all know insects can get into whatever they want to.
So Frank took the seat and tank off and unscrewed the vent tube and cleaned it out. Put everything back and filled the oil back up to the proper level.
It was about 2.5 hours of labor and they didn't charge me for it. They only charged me for pick-up and drop off of the tractor $75.00. I figured that was fair since this was not a warranty thing (they can't bill kioti for a wasp's choice of nesting), but just a freak thing of nature.
Tom plans to drop the tractor off thursday eve after close -- that's fine as I don't need the machine til this weekend.
Once I get the machine back, I will take pictures of where the vent exactly is so this is well documented for future reference.
I'm just amazed -- and I'm very happy there's nothing catastrophically wrong w/ the tractor. It was probably a couple or 3 quarts of oil that escaped during the geyser event, so I'm convinced no damage was done internally since it still had at least 4 gallons of fluid in there and all tractor functions were working even w/ some oil missing.
So I'm psyched... next time I will try not to freak out when issues arise... hoping my "wierd" problems with the machine are over...
Stay tuned for pictures when the machine comes home... I miss my orange girl!!!
