How To: Change Fluid on RZT Hydro Gear Transaxle Cub Cadet

[Music] hey guys welcome to how to a few even though it's approaching the end of the season here I'm gonna do some maintenance on our cub cadet zero turn and you guys ought to stick around because this is gonna be a good one for those of you that found this video because you're having problems with your transaxle maybe ones going a little faster than the other and you're getting kind of an uneven roll as you cut the grass you might have searched other YouTube videos etc and you're freaking out because you think that you need new transaxles that are like $1200 apiece or whatever I'm gonna show you today how you can service those transactions which has probably never been done to unit unless you explicitly took it in and tried it this particular model it's a residential RZT 54 inch but all the other sizes are similar and the transaxle should be similar to you just have to ascertain as to whether or not you have filters and what the process is for changing the fluid for your transactions but these have some pretty beefy transaxles that each have filters on them and they take about 2 quarts above 20 50 weight motor oil in each plus there's a reservoir under the seat but we'll get to all that in a minute first thing I want to do is check out our little kit we got now these kits are not cheap this is an actual hydro gear which is the manufacturers model you may be able to find a cheaper version and I'm gonna attempt to like source cheaper parts in the next cycle I'm gonna do it again but I wanted to get the real version to start off with and it comes with everything I'll take it out and I guess I'll show you a bit by bit so the first part is probably the most important is this pump now if you've ever changed fluid in an outboard motor you might have seen something similar to this it attaches to the outboard and you can pump it in yeah I don't know this time looking clay right should be fun okay it looks like it's locked alright it's locked in place but now you can see this attaches to the quart of oil which is included and you can pump it into the transaxle there's also a fitting this fitting is gonna screw into the transaxle and then attach with the hose so that we can pump fluid in and that's gonna minimize the amount of air that's trapped in pockets but we will still have some air in there so we'll have to do a quick bleeding procedure by running the mower to get some of that hair to the top so that more oil can flow in from the reservoir under the seat and kind of top off as we're actually using the mower so there's total of two for each and then an extra for the reservoir the top off this looks like additional spout presumably attaches here and then most importantly are the two all filters I probably should have gone and matched these on auto footsore give me a number so I can buy some cheaper ones next time the important parts are the thread size and opening and then also where the seal is but I believe I'm going to just go ahead and keep one of the old ones and let it drain and keep it in the box so that I can use it to refer to next time in case I want to make that smooth switch obviously I'm going to recommend you just go ahead and buy the original parts from hydro gear that's gonna be your best solution every time all right that's essentially it for the kit we do have the motor already on jack stands I'm gonna show you that in a minute and we'll get started on draining the old oil but first for that I do that I'm gonna go ahead and start the mower up and run the transmission a little bit both forward and reverse just to heat up the oil in there so that when it actually drains it's a little more liquid and drains out better in the hopes that it'll take along with it some of the trash that might be stuck inside the transaxles and then hopefully we'll get a better response quicker speed once we get everything going again with a fresh set of filters and fresh oil all right I am largely gonna feel unable to show you what's underneath here but you can see I have the mower elevated on jack stands on both sides so the wheels are off the ground it's still relatively level so it should drain right I'm a jack it up and let it down while it's draining but for now to get the covers off and I'm going to show you a picture of the covers they're plastic and there are two rusted bolts that you can see and then also one in the fact that you can't see those three need to come off and that will expose the filters on both sides as presumably you can see in the picture three-eighths or a 10 millimeter lefty loosey three screws off here is our cap nice and dirty cleaning out don't try to get as much of this dirt off so that none of it contaminates the system but it's pretty dirty man all right go ahead and remove the other side cap too before I pull the filters off sicker ones off also very dirty this part I've put my oil receptacle underneath hopefully the filters will or not all right two of the most perfect things in life is one having the right woman and two having the right tool this is an oil filter wrench just a seatbelt cord and it wraps around and then tightens around the oil filter allowing you to apply some leverage to get it off and that's what we're going to do right now all right are you still taping we got run out of battery here but finally have it turn that filter was entirely too tight what filters off hole is draining all right think you can see a little bit better on this side I've already loosened that filter i'ma try and screw it and get that side dream all right we'll let that run for a while getting messy under there all right didn't catch it on the other side but here's the new filter and we're gonna reach down there and get a little bit of hopefully relatively clean oil to rub on that seal all right let's see yeah I'm just gonna rub around the top [Music] then I'm gonna take my rag I'm gonna wipe this Harriet down trying to be careful not to get dirt into the oil intake ports just wipe that seal area down I can throw sand or anything that might cause the leak I'll screw on the oil filter as per instructions which were hand tight three cores to one turn past contact which I probably went a little bit further but it'll be good all right so from the bottom all we need to do now is replace those caps and then refill the oil and then bleed it and we'll be done sorry I'm not sure what you can see but I have replaced the cap on the filters and tightening the screws now I'm just a little bit I'm tightening it's a plastic part so I'm not gonna go too tight the other side I'm feeling around for the cap on top where I have to fill them it feels like it's an Allen screw plug so I'm gonna go grab a few allen wrenches and we'll see if we can remove that plug some stroke of luck I got the right allen wrench on the first try take a picture of what that looks like for ya [Applause] here we see the Allen wrench in the plug capture but problem is I can't get it loose so any a piece of cover tubing I'm hoping I'll get enough advantage on this yeah you know nothing should ever be that tight all right that's loose not bleeding I'm gonna go ahead and grab the fitting and a couple gallons a couple quarts of oil and the pump all right here's our fitting that's gonna go into where that just showed you in that picture that port there's a plug we removed next we'll attach the hose all right now we are ready to pump tell you what we're gonna be here a while I'm gonna go ahead and get more comfortable you can see that's so far we've gotten so far a third of a quart I'll be back when I'm done all right so it's a good hour later after destroying quite a few tools and almost to screwing this cap I finally have it loose so that I can fill the second transaxle and you can see there that I've had to put some elbow grease into it just so I could get a loose with the wrench and socket I've tried everything all right not much see but we have finished filling our second transaxle remove that fitting here we go and then we will replace this drain screw it's just slightly banged up I'm gonna peek in on that periodically make sure that's not leakin I'm definitely not gonna tighten it as much as it was all right now we're gonna proceed with the purging operation to try to get the air out of all the little crevices inside of the transaxle so it will operate normal we're gonna have to set our releases now those are the releases that you put inside that you normally pull out if you want to push the lawnmower consists of a little rod but you have to lift go forwards hook in place all right I've left the lawnmower up on jack stands the wheels are disengaged I'm gonna go ahead and start it up and the procedure is to push slowly forwards four or five times and I don't know how it's gonna sound presumably it's going to be a different sound and kind of loud until it gets the air out and then backwards four to five times or so - let's see how it goes first time I've done it [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] all right for the next step I'm gonna reengage the wheels check my all the level now I'm going to repeat that procedure with the wheels engaged and then repeat it with them disengage and check them a whole level again not much change in all level this time all right so honestly that's about as much in the bleeding process as I can take it's time to take this guy out in the grass and see how it goes all right so that's it for another episode of how tune in a few I'm about to jump on that machine and I'll run it out of here real quick let you watch hopefully this video helped you out you should do that service probably about every hundred hours or so and depending on how much you cut here I cut once a week probably thirty weeks of the year so I'm hitting 100 hours every year I'm not so sure that I'm gonna be that good about it to do it every year but depending on how much you mow in your area you'll have to gauge there is an hour meter on the machine fortunately mine's broke so I'm just estimating how often it needs to be done and it's fairly expensive machines these zero turns so you probably want to spend a few bucks to take care of so hopefully I helped you out give me a thumbs up subscribe that goes a long way to help out youtubers like me and to keep bringing videos to you so I'll see you next time thanks for watching [Music] [Music] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Daniel Scheer

Views: 153,505

Rating: 4.8239145 out of 5

Keywords: hydrogear, transaxle, cub cadet, zero turn, mower, lawnmower, transmission, hydraulic, hydro gear, hydro-gear

Id: MR46ESaL334

Length: 21min 59sec (1319 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 04 2018