John Deere 5055E Oil Leak

[kornowsd]

I posted a while back, about this, and got a single suggestion. Was hoping that others might chime in, here. I have recently purchased a John Deere 5055E tractor with the 3029 PowerTech diesel in in it. Over the course of running the tractor (80-hours, now), the thing has consumed nearly a gallon of radiator fluid... oil has run and pooled (not dripped, or seeped) out of the oil pan (worst under the operators station) accumulating on the bolt heads and migrating over to the transmission casing. There are leaks around the head gasket on the right side of the tractor (worst), around the intake manifold where the turbo meets and in various other places around the engine area. I've had this thing to John Deere service - they performed a DTAC on it and, basically, just went around the tractor and tightened up all the bolts. They also removed the oil pan, put a new pan gasket on it, sealed it and repainted everything. Sent the tractor back to me. The tractor sat, for a few weeks while I took care of personal business... I crawled under it and the oil had, already, pooled all around the pan bolts, again - without running AFTER a new gasket and everything torqued down.

The weird thing... today I went out, torqued all the pan bolts to spec... they all had about 1/2 turn on them to get them there. I wiped it all down, cleaned it up... started the tractor, let it run for about 10-minutes, then run it a bit harder to warm it up, good... parked it, let it cool down... checked the pan bolts and ALL of them required about 1/2 turn to get them back into spec. The thing had been running for about 15-minutes and ALL the pan bolts had loosened in that timeframe... I re-torqued, torqued the head bolts down, torqued down the bolts on the intake manifold... wiped it all down... fired it up, run for 10-minutes, run harder for another five, shut it down... checked torque - same problem, ALL bolts they'd all come loose.

So, the question becomes... what gives? Did Deere tap those bolt threads in the block just a touch too large and then put in "standard" sized bolts? This is what it appears has occurred.

Anyway... feedback/thoughts/ideas are welcome. I'm not sure where to go with this. Deere's back doing DTAC's but I wonder if this can be fixed w/o dropping a new, well-built, 3029 in the cavity that was made for it?

Thanks.

 

[fieldman12]

Is the coolant issue resolved? These tractors seem to have issues with the coolant hoses sealing well. One guy said he had them replace all his hoses and he said it appears they are made of better material. I know some of mine have been tightned many times even by dealer once and still needed additional tighting. As for the oil pan I suspect it has nothing to do with the casting on how it was tapped. I bet it is the rubber but so far I have not heard of any issues with that. The head sounds like to me the head gasket or possible head warp could be the problem. How does oil look when you check it?

 

[Zebrafive]

Have you marked the bolt heads to indicate if they are moving? It might be the gasket is "slipping or thinning" for lack of a better word, requiring retorque.