Oil Contamination Worries

[JustAwrench]

Another thing I gather from reading through some of the posts is a worry of contamination of your machines' hydraulic systems by renting and sharing and loaning attachments. I guess I probably take oil availability for granted, but I have on ocassion and when so ordered flushed attachments for our rental department and worried customers by uncoupling and opening a return line and with the machine at an idle, ran the return oil from the attachment into a bucket, then topped off the tank. Just run it 5 seconds or so. Unless it's a backhoe or something with big cylinders, its not a lot of oil, and ALL the old oil comes out. Just a thought.

 

[RS Coyote]

Good idea....

 

[wingspar]

Good idea....

I'm not an oil expert, but all of this talk of oil "contamination" sounds like pure poppycock to me. My opinion: hyd oil is hyd oil. The only difference could be in the additives. Anti-foam and Anti-corrosion would be two that come to mind. I would be more worried about getting foreign material in the system from removing the couplers. There was a good article in a construction equipment magazine that I read a few months ago, I wonder if I could track it down.......

 

[JustAwrench]

I'm not an oil expert, but all of this talk of oil "contamination" sounds like pure poppycock to me. My opinion: hyd oil is hyd oil. The only difference could be in the additives. Anti-foam and Anti-corrosion would be two that come to mind. I would be more worried about getting foreign material in the system from removing the couplers. There was a good article in a construction equipment magazine that I read a few months ago, I wonder if I could track it down.......

You're right. Unless you're running new(under warranty) machines and attachments it's probably not worth worrying about. I do wonder where it's going, though. Bobcat is getting more adamant about using Black Gold and I've heard rumor about dye. I bought some Ingersoll-Rand engine oil the other day and it's purple. The Hy-Gaard is red like ATF and I've met people who think it's OK to put ATF in their hydraulic tanks. People will put Brake fluid in hydraulic oil to seal up leaks to sell the machine(but that's evil, not ignorance).The near future I see is oil analysis to support warranty claims and possible rejections due to improper oil. Sure seems a simple thing to just use what they recommend, and I'd hate to see a rejected warranty claim on pumps and motors because a trace of wrong color dye was found.