Creeper gear oil

[CADplans]

The reason for the two recommendations at that time is easy.

Either worked.

Some regions did not have instant access to Hy-Tran.

In the age of the internet things are different.

I went to an antique tractor show in Rocky Mount VA this weekend. There was an old baler on display.

Next to it was a pile of baling wires, I was drooling at what I could do with those!!

[Darrell]

A friend of mine mixes chain oil for his chainsaw and 30wt oil together and puts it in his creeper trans. He says it doesn't "burp" oil out of the breather tube when you mix it.

[Yosemite Sam]

It is my opinion that when using an oil that is too thick for the application, the oil will be flung out from the crucial areas that need the lube most and can not flow back in, fast enough to do its job.

[Maxwelhse]

Originally Posted by J-Mech

1.) I've been wrenching long time and if someone said that to me I would want some pretty stiff arguing followed by multiple examples of why they want to defer from the very thing that the designers wanted. It would have to be based on more than a few hours of testing on one machine, or a "feeling" that it was wrong.

You should recognize that I don't have to provide you with loads of data, SAE already did! 30W engine oil and essentially ATF aren't even close to the same, but... whatever! That was my entire argument and basis for the comparison of HyTran to ATF to motor oil and the basis of arguing the manual. If the manual said that maple syrup or HyTran are acceptable, I'd be asking the same question.

The manual also doesn't say anything about changing the hydro fluid, at all, ever (the closest it gets is "as needed")... I don't follow that procedure either... I doubt few people here do.

3.) If you have ever worked on hydraulic systems, or fluid drives, you would know that 30WT oil is very commonly a substitute for a hydraulic oil. Most often, it is recommended when the ambient temp is high. You would "think" that the two fluids are very different, when in reality they are not. Hydraulic oils range in viscosity just like motor oils. SAE 30 is not that much heavier than a typical hydraulic oil (On average hydraulic oil is a SAE20- SAE-30)

I do realize that... Ordinary tap water has been used as a hydraulic fluid for nearly 2 centuries too.. That doesn't mean that I would swap water into any old hydraulic system and just hope for the best, no matter what any manual said. That's the entire point of my statement. That is why I'm questioning the manual. If two things are genuinely not equivalent then why blindly believe they will behave the same way?

Gearboxes aren't hydraulic systems either...

4.) I think this part is interesting. "Given my limited exposure to creepers" ..... How then do you justify making a recommendation like that if you admit you basically know nothing about them? I'm not totally sure what your "professional background" all entails but from that comment I would say it definitely isn't tearing machines down all day. I'm sure you weren't soliciting opinions either but to make such a bold statement on using olive oil in these machines should come with more than just a "I think it would be OK". As far as the last part goes with the $50 bet, and the cost of the creeper, if he does go ahead and do it are you going to buy him a new creeper if it fails on olive oil?

Soliciting opinions is fine... Flat out not reading what was written so you can straw man me for the sake of your own aggrandizement, with a nice side of heavy condescension, is not.

A gearbox is a gearbox... There's nothing mysterious happening inside a creeper that doesn't happen any other other gear box. In fact, it's just about the simplest gearbox on Earth. Yep... I've serviced plenty of gearboxes before... The sole creeper I had in my possession seemed full of gear and it was fine in and out... I have no reason to believe it was some unique snowflake in the world of simple straight cut gear trains.

I never told him to fill it with olive oil, I said I bet it would work... I told him *I* would fill the gearbox with gear oil and service it frequently, since the manual can't even decide what to do. I was hoping that comment, if anything, would encourage debate and not something just barely a half notch up from name calling.

Now, maybe I'm going overboard here, but if you are going to blatantly disregard the recommendations of the service manual, maybe you should test it on your own machine before spouting off that it can be done. I may not always "go by the book" but when I don't I'll pay for it if I'm wrong. Unless I know from more than one experience that it will work, I definitely don't recommend it to other people.

I didn't blatantly disregard anything. What I said was that the manual is arguing with itself in that what is essentially ATF and 30W are NOT the same (especially true in a shear application, like a gearbox) and you're listing reasons that they are occasionally substituted in hydraulic systems, that have nothing to do with gearbox lubes, for why they are.

Anyhow, if you want to continue to argue and be condescending to me, that's fine. I'm not going to spend any more time publicly doing so.

If you have something to add to the conversation that is meaningful and respectful, I would love to read it.