Lucky this time. What might happen. How to handle it?

[bitseeker]

I used the 8' Landpride snowplow to clear our ~ 1,300' long, steep, paved asphalt driveway. A few days later, when the driveway was dry, I noticed a long dark mark, which I assumed was hydraulic oil from the Kubota. I found fresh oil at one of the pivot cylinder input ports and assumed, that it was the source of the oil mark. Fortunately, the 5240 was in a closed building. There was a loose fitting, which I tightened. I added about 3 quarts of oil to the hydraulic system and tested the side-to-side blade motion and that worked fine. There was no oil leak anywhere.

(There were LOTs of other problems that came up in the finding, filling, and fixing, but those have no bearing on my core questions.)

My questions are:

• If the leak had been really large or had happened early in the many snow moving passes, losing lots of oil, would the 5240 have sensed very low oil?
• Would that low oil have shut down the tractor movement and the loader arm lift (hydrostatic drive)?
• Since the driveway is one vehicle wide, if oil loss immobilized the tractor with loader arms down, how would one get the tractor off the driveway and to a place where it could be fixed?

Thanks

 

[hosspuller]

RE: dead tractor with FEL down. First choice is to place the FEL in float position, Lift the FEL and secure it. If float is not available, Hold control valve in raise position, lift FEL and secure. Last option is to open hydraulic hoses into a bucket, raise FEL and secure.

 

[5030]

Interesting comment. I had the exact same thing happen to me last winter with my rear mount blower, a chute rotator hose got a split in in and was pumping out fluid. Lucky for me the split was on the upper side of one of the hoses and the fluid (when I rotated the chute was spraying up and covering the rear window so I stopped (in the road as I was blowing the road out front of the farm off) and inspected it and took it in the tractor shop and replaced the hose with a spare. If it had been blowing downward, not sure if I would have caught it, just lucky I guess. I lost about a gallon of fluid and the unit holds almost 15 gallons so I brought it back up to full and carried on.

Spraying fluid on snow is kind of hard to see...

 

[seville009]

I don't think it would have a "low hydraulic oil" shut down like there usually is for a low engine oil situation.

if you don't notice the leaking hydraulic oil, you would eventually start noticing that something seems to feel wrong with the hydraulic actions (jerky movements, etc)

if something appears to be wrong, I always try to drive in an area where, if it dies, it won't be blocking anything.

if it dies with the fel/implement down, you can jack it up and use a chain or something to hold it up. Also nothing wrong if you have to drag the dead tractor with the implements still on the ground - dragging the won't hurt them.

 

[5030]

My almost 15 gallons of fluid would make a pretty big spot in the snow I imagine.

 

[Hay Dude]

Just lost lots of Super UDT-2 to a “cap plug” Kubota has on the side of the transmission. It fell off while I was driving across a field and before I knew it, it was gone. I did have a code, but can’t remember what it was.
On same day, I think I lost an injector.
Oh the joys