Funny I had 3 Ford OEM manuals and they didn't say much of anything about the subject. However they do have a 5000 maint section and lo and behold, it does come with a spin on filter. Hmmmm.
I get out my I&T FO 20 for the 00s and 4 cyl 000 tractors and I see no filters but do see a field kit for a spin on filter and it mentions a regular oil filter is what's used, like you said Soundguy, the way it should have been all along.
Then I go to my FO-31 on the 3 cyl 000s and on page 126 is a diagram of the piping and the screen and paper filters. Then paragraph 341 defines the "often" comment in the OEM manuals as 2 years or 2400 hours coinciding with one of the 1200 hour fluid changes and tells you how to get at them which is a whole lot more realistic than "often".
Even though the bulk of the I & T manuals covers the SOS tranny, what pages they do devote to other things to me are hands down better than the OEM books.
While you are here Soundguy, on another forum we had an exchange about my tranny case filling up on my 4 cyl 2000 and you mentioned the hyd tubes going through the tranny case. Even though I had tops off Fords fixing hyd pistons and making adjustments, I never put 2 and 2 together on where the hyd pipes went after they left the diff housing; no reason to I guess. Your comments about the pipes rusting and the rusted out holes allowing the tranny housing to fill with hyd fluid surely answered my question as to why my housing kept filling up with oil. Also on your comment about the 2000 being a whole different critter than the 00s seems that you were referring to the 3 cyl models as the IT 20 is for 00s and 4 cyl 000s.
Well, I don't use my machines a lot and they work ok for me now. I keep the tranny drained down and the hyd fluid level up. It takes about a year for a reasonable amount of fluid to accumulate. If the 3000 ever gives me hyd problems, I'll bite the bullet and tear it apart and replace the filters.
Thanks guys,
Mark
