How do I bleed the air out of my hydraulics?

[STx]

I finally got around to unloading the tractor from the trailer today and double-checked the fluid while it was having trouble and it was indeed aerated. I guess it must be pulling air in from somewhere so I'll go through it and see what I can come up with. This time, the 3 pt lift would drop when I started working the FEL.

The hydro trans still works regardless of the what the rest of it is doing though, which seems kind of odd to me.

 

[STx]

Well, I looked through it all and I can't see where it's pulling air from so I'm just going to go ahead and replace everything that was involved in the original problem, including some stuff I've already replaced once. I hate to just throw parts at it but it's a lot of work getting it apart enough to really be able to look at the system so I'd rather replace more than I need to than have to tear it all down again.

I guess it's sort of a good thing that this happened, in removing the operator's platform, I found some rust spots beginning under the rubber mat so I'm going to go ahead and hit those with a wire brush and freshen up the paint.

 

[Egon]

Cavitation will show up as bubbles. No air in them.

Are all the filters, screens etc. Clean?

 

[STx]

They should be but I'm going to change the fluids and filters as part of this. I know its a shotgun approach but hopefully part of it solves the problem.

I'm think that the issue is somewhere along the parts that were damaged just because the Hydro Trans is fed from a different line and is having none of these issues, it's just the FEL and lift arms that these lines supply that are having the problems. Since their feed is split at the filter, it seems to me that I can safely rule out everything behind it.