hydraulic oil for dump body?

[lostcause]

i've got a ton dump with a 12v power pack driving the hydraulic cylinder for the lift on the body. i have only owned this for a few years, and i mostly use it for plowing in the winter. i put the body up to let the snow drain out of it, and realized it was pretty slow going up and down.

first, i realized i don't know what it uses for fluid in the first place, and second, i was wondering whether there is a synthetic or other fluid for them that flows better in the cold weather. since they never heat up (except from use) i didn't know whether there was a good hydraulic oil that worked well in them for year round use that performed better than standard fluid in the winter.

the body/lift is made by omaha, but that's as much as i know. i bought it used and there's a lot of rust and crud on everything, and i'm not so interested that i'll dig for model numbers in this weather. i'll wait till spring for a more thorough exam. i would have to think that anything like this will use a standard oil?

 

[20 20]

I use an aw32 hydro oil in mine, works good year round

 

[David_Kb7uns]

Have a dump trailer and one of the pump manufactures actually has a chart based on temp.

http://www.pjtrailers.com/downloads/KTI_Hydraulics.pdf

This should give you an idea what viscosity.

David Kb7uns

 

[crashz]

The 12v power packs are similar to the 12v Monarch pumps used for snow plows. Mine was the same way, and in fact, probably much worse. My power pack was full of a brown emulsion, and the rust is so bacd that I could not drain it. I used an turkey baster to remove as much of theold fluid as possible and flushed it this was with ATF. Once clean, I refilled with synthetic snowplow fluid. It operates much better, with less battery strain now.

 

[Soundguy]

I would probably use aw32 in it.. but I have heard of people putting syn atf fluids like valvoline maxlife.. or atf+4 in there. in colder climates that thin syn fluid flows darn good.

soundguy