Sorry I disappeared. After this funeral (my wife's cousin), my father (95) went to hospice and finally passed. (he had a fantastic life)
Anyway, this cropped up in my head and I have a vague memory.
Going to attach a PDF that shows the schematic of the motors.
I had rebuilt these (my first time ever taking a hydraulic motor apart) 3-5 years ago. I really don't recall much about it other than....it was oily!
Given the age of these things, I thought it might be worth buying another set of rebuild gaskets so did so. Had these issues so maybe 2 years ago, pulled one off to rebuild, the rebuild.
Nothing struck me as an issue UNTIL.... look at page 2 and part #8...the end seperator.
When I was putting this back together I distinctly recall that the motor would NOT go completely together. Long story short, this part #8 sat under the impellers, raising them by the thickness of the seperator....so I removed it. The motor went back together as it should and I moved on.
This has me wondering, is this the motor that is cutting well.... is this the motor that is doing poorly? I don't even recall which of the three I redid!
I DO know, something you buy a rebuild kit and you have 54 parts......only of which maybe you use 45 depending on what you are rebuilding. I presumed that since this part prevented the halves from properly closing, that it was for a different motor.
NOW, I'm wondering if it DOES belong in there (as now it might be an internal leakage point and causing some of my issues) and maybe something other got missed by me, that was keeping it from closing. My take at the time is this part would be crushed, were the two halves to be forced to close, which is why I (think) I removed it.
Again, I have NO memory if I installed or didn't install this part in all three.... I should have two rebuild kits, I'm debating on yanking the two poor performers and now that I'm more in-tune to the various parts, actually pay attention to see if that part is/isn't in there when they come apart.
My thinking is if I take them apart and all appears well (presuming part is in there) then just put back together without using the kit.
I'll admit.... I don't care much for how dirty I might get digging into this stuff.....but aside from that, I do enjoy taking things apart, trying to fix and putting back so other than the oil part, I don't mind doing this. I also know that I'll never know the factual answer (did I or didn't I put part #8 in there) until I actually look.