Water in Hydraulics

[Dust]

I have a Kubota L3010 Hydrostat and there is water in the Hydraulic Fluid.
I drained the fluid out of the bottom, and most of the lines to the loader.
How do I get the fluid out of the loader Cylinders?
Should i run cheap oil and filters(do they make them?) to try to flush the water out?

 

[J_J]

You could maybe use air to force the fluid out of the cyl and hoses .

Flushing is a good idea with some cheap fluid.

Flushing Hydraulic Systems

Excerpt

We use a cheaper tractor supply oil or any other type oil not to hurt the pocket book to much. It often takes two or three type flushes to remove the bulk of the moisture from the build up. The lower grade oils do not give the same protection as the Kubota oil but it does leave the tractor usable for five to ten hour periods to be able to better purge the whole system of the water. After the drained oil is coming cleaner then go back to a good grade of oil.

I would also add to run the tractor to get the fluid good and hot, which will help to pull the crud from the walls of the hyd components.

Do the same with the second rinse.

Work the controls to fully use all the components of the hyd system.

 

[Tx Jim]

I'll add to what J_J stated to be sure the breather on the reservoir is not plugged with dirt so any moisture that will evaporate can leave reservoir. A plugged breather can cause hyd oil to have water contamination

 

[oldnslo]

Should i run cheap oil and filters(do they make them?) to try to flush the water out?

You can buy filter elements for removing water from oil but they are limited in the amount of water they will hold. I am 99.9% positive you will NOT find an element that will fit your tractor so you would have to buy a filter housing assembly and then figure out how to mount it on your tractor.

My concern is where did the water come from? Do you have leak some where or is this from short time usage that heats the tranny up and then cools down creating condensation?

 

[Loadstar]

When my 640 would get water in hydraulics I had a cheap method. I would get a clean 5gal metal bucket, and a turkey fryer. Next I would drain fluid into bucket, set on fryer and boil off the water. I only heat enough to boil the water off as I didn't want to toast the oil too bad. When the oil cleared up I would let it cool below scalding temps for safety and dump it back in. Run tractor for a bit and start cycle over. When clean oil came out back out finally I would discard the boiled oil in exchange for fresh oil. Doing it like this saved me a lot of money since it would have taken a lot of time and oil to clear it. Attempt at your own risk.