VERY unhappy with John Deere's documentation

[deputy11]

Hey soulasphil, my 2010 3520 owner's manual says the same thing about the zerks. None on mine either but I looked long and hard for awhile!:laughing::laughing:

 

[sgoldste01]

Thanks, Dave!

It certainly wasn't my intent to offend anyone. My intent was to express my frustration over the damage this documentation error might have caused my GT245. My other intent was to get a reading from forum members who are "in the know" as to the odds that I did or didn't cause any harm.

Of course, the other benefit of this thread is to help others in the community. Dave has already found this info helpful. How many other GT owners out there will stumble across this thread over the years and think, "Huh, I was wondering why I couldn't get the full amount of tranny fluid into the machine. I think I'll look into this on my tractor too."

 

[sgoldste01]

The plot thickens. If you bought a GT225 or GT235, then you got the proper procedure in your owner's manual:

Service Transmission

So apparently this mistake only occurs in the GT245 owner's manual.

Very strange. :confused2:

 

[sgoldste01]

Here's the response I got from Tuff Torq:

==============
Hello Sir,
Hopefully, with the oil being low in the gear side you did not hurt a thing. Yes, always fill the gear side up to the threads. Also, you could possibly even take the tank off to make sure that the hydro side is indeed full. Please let me know if you have any questions...
==============

Perhaps it's wishful thinking on my part, but the message I'm reading here is that maxed out fluid on the differential side isn't quite as critical as it is on the hydrostatic side. This would support my earlier reasoning for why the overflow tank dumps into the hydro side of the tranny.

Anyway, I didn't put much time on the tranny (approx 30 min of driving on a flat driveway) with the low fluid, and the time I did put on it was with a fresh batch of 5w50 fluid. So the fluid on the diff side was indeed low, but at least it had good fluid in it, so whatever fluid had made it into the diff side was good stuff.

At this point I'll assume that everything is fine, and will hope for the best. And now I know the proper way to safely and quickly fill the tranny in spite of JD's documentation inconsistencies.