Hytran in Off Topic Tractors???

[bjamison]

I gather Hytran is 10w at oil and am considering using it in my old hydro and gear drive Wheelhorse tractors and maybe a Simplicity.

Wheelhorse hydros with Eaton 1100 pump calls for 10W-30 oil. Gear drives originally 140wt gear oil and later 90wt gear oil.

In as much as IH used Hytran in both gear and hydro tractors, wondering if it would be a decent substitute? I'm mostly interested due to Hytran oil quality reputation and moisture handling characteristics.

Any thoughts on is would be much appreciated.

 

[dfrisk]

BILL - I had a POS '74 Chevy LUV p/u years ago that in winter you couldn't shift from 1st into any other gear once moving for about a mile or two. I ran the thing out to Dad's place one warm winter day and drained whatever oil was in that little 4-spd and replaced it with Hy-Tran. Shifted fine after that.

The old letter series tractors if well worn did have problems running Hy-Tran, mostly leaks from worn seals & bad gaskets. But gear roll-over was worse when shifting from nuetral into any gear because the Hy-Tran didn't slow the spinning gears down as fast. Dad tried Hy-Tran in his '51 M for a year or two, the M was his loader/chore tractor and waiting 10+ seconds to shift into gear after fepressing the clutch was NOT what you wanted. A switch back to 90W and all was fine. But on the newer IH's like the Super M-TA & 450 Farmall, Ht-Tran was required to properly lube the over-running clutch in the Torque-Amplifier. Back in '54 when the first SM-TA's were sold IH sold an additive, T-A suppliment, or something like that for those tractors, and finally created Hy-Tran with Viscosity Oil to lube the T-A properly, and work in the live hyd. & transmission & final drives.

Not sure about the Eaton hydro, but the Sundstrand 15U used in CC's will tolerate a wide range of different oils. I'd do a search for lube spec's on the Eaton hydro, or maybe other brand tractors that use it and see what they recommend.

I would "THINK" Hy-Tran would work in place of 10W-30 motor oil just fine. But I think the lighter weight Hy-Tran would cause the same problem in a manual trans that has 90W & 140W gear oil recommended as what Dad had in his M, leaking & gear roll-over. I think both WH & Simplicity used Peerless transmissions, they used a LOT of small needle bearings... and IMO, Hy-Tran would do a better job of lubing them than 90 or 140W, but may not be as good a lube as a heavier oil if they were worked/pulled really hard in warm weather.

 

[bjamison]

Dennis - good info. Never thought about the heavier weight oil slowing down the gears for shifting.

BTW - I had an uncle that bought a Chevy LUV pick-up around '74 too. It was a light blue. We thought it was a pretty good truck, but it really never saw hard work. Some 15 or so years later, it really looked like a trash heap, cracked dash, seats and that pretty light blue paint? The rust REALLY stood out like a sore thumb on that fadded paint - LOL.

Wheelhorse used a homegrown cast iron gear drive transmission. Though it was belt drive from the engine to tranny, it was and is a VERY tough tranny. They called it "Unidrive". They are easy to split and service if/when required. The gear drives were typically 8 speed, 3 fwd, 1 rev, with hi-lo range standard.

Seems like with most all of these old iron tractors, even tough the Kohler engines would live thousands of hours, the frame and tranny's would go a lifetime and at the end of the day, the engine was the weak link - if you ran the tractor long enough!

I'll probably stick with the MFG recommended fluids for now.

Thanks again - great info.