So I purchased a JD 670 on Sunday morning, its a pretty clean 1400 hour machine with a few dings on it but hardly any rust and seems to run well. It has a bush hog 1846QT loader and turf tires... but neither of those things are very important to the question at hand. What is related is that the previous owner recently just did an oil change, maybe two weeks ago. The oil is pretty dark but I chalked it up to maybe him not getting all the old oil out of it. Also note that I checked the oil both at his house and mine and saw it was a little high.. maybe quarter inch above the top of the hash marks which I guesstimated to be him adding 3 quarts instead of 2.6? He claims its used no oil between changes and that he's never noticed an oil leak when it was stored inside his garage, its been sitting outside all summer after he got his new tractor.
So I pulled the tractor into my garage Sunday after I picked it up and parked it, not a drop of oil as it sat waiting and didnt notice any in the trailer either. Last night I go out to grease the loader and tractor and I found that I had to start the tractor to lift the loader arms to reach four grease zerks on the loader. Before I did this though I crawled under the tractor and saw a few spots around and all along the power steering hydraulic ram that were coated in black dirt... you know that look where someplace got oily then attracted dirt and then repeated the process 20 times. So I thought maybe it was from oil change spilling and tried to clean it off the best I could. I started the tractor and let it idle around 1200RPM while I moved the loader where I needed and it probably sat idling for 15 or more minutes. I returned it to idle for a few seconds then shut it down. After that I looked under tractor to pick up some tools and I saw about 1/4 quart of oil sitting right under the tractor. I immediately thought it was the drain plug or the oil filter. I checked both but neither seemed to be the culprit. You literally cannot see any oil leaking at all inside the hood/side fender area, it all seems to be coming from the very front lower part of the engine. If I had to guess based on my looking around last night I'd guess the seal behind the crank pulley? I'm going to look more tonight but its really hard to see up where its coming from, behind radiator, in front of engine block. I did check the crankcase vent tube and it didnt seem overly oily looking and it also didnt appear to be directed in the spot where I saw the oil coming from. I started the tractor a second time last night and it didnt drip at all at first, a few minutes into idling it then just started dripping down from wherever it was leaking, a pretty steady drip.
Any tips on what to look for and how to better get in there to look around?
I contacted seller and he apologized up and down said "figure out where its coming from and we will make sure to make this right". How would you handle this when you do identify the leak source? If its something that I feel I could tackle I might try that... I'd really like to keep this. If it looks like its a huge issue I might see if we could reverse the sale (although I really like this tractor otherwise)... what do you guys think.
So I pulled the tractor into my garage Sunday after I picked it up and parked it, not a drop of oil as it sat waiting and didnt notice any in the trailer either. Last night I go out to grease the loader and tractor and I found that I had to start the tractor to lift the loader arms to reach four grease zerks on the loader. Before I did this though I crawled under the tractor and saw a few spots around and all along the power steering hydraulic ram that were coated in black dirt... you know that look where someplace got oily then attracted dirt and then repeated the process 20 times. So I thought maybe it was from oil change spilling and tried to clean it off the best I could. I started the tractor and let it idle around 1200RPM while I moved the loader where I needed and it probably sat idling for 15 or more minutes. I returned it to idle for a few seconds then shut it down. After that I looked under tractor to pick up some tools and I saw about 1/4 quart of oil sitting right under the tractor. I immediately thought it was the drain plug or the oil filter. I checked both but neither seemed to be the culprit. You literally cannot see any oil leaking at all inside the hood/side fender area, it all seems to be coming from the very front lower part of the engine. If I had to guess based on my looking around last night I'd guess the seal behind the crank pulley? I'm going to look more tonight but its really hard to see up where its coming from, behind radiator, in front of engine block. I did check the crankcase vent tube and it didnt seem overly oily looking and it also didnt appear to be directed in the spot where I saw the oil coming from. I started the tractor a second time last night and it didnt drip at all at first, a few minutes into idling it then just started dripping down from wherever it was leaking, a pretty steady drip.
Any tips on what to look for and how to better get in there to look around?
I contacted seller and he apologized up and down said "figure out where its coming from and we will make sure to make this right". How would you handle this when you do identify the leak source? If its something that I feel I could tackle I might try that... I'd really like to keep this. If it looks like its a huge issue I might see if we could reverse the sale (although I really like this tractor otherwise)... what do you guys think.
