log splitter oil looks to have a bunch of little metal specks in it ? at first change

[bigric954rr]

OK i have a speeco 35 ton splitter used about 10 -20hrs about 1 year old now.

Well i wasn't planning to change hydraulic oil cause a bunch of people said they never had there has been running for years

Any way i did and installed a bigger filter napa 1628 but had a question on the old oil. as it drained in the black pan i could see a bunch of shiny specks almost like bronze piston pumps when there are going out very fine specks could have been sliver in color to just dirty oil making them look bronze.

Any one ever see this ? im pretty sure it would have a gear pump and it works fine . just kinda shocked was thinking it would have been really clean oil coming out of a sealed system with such low hours

 

[NSMaple1]

I only changed my hydro oil once, and that was because it had water in it. I think it accumulated over the years from seeping in the top of the filler cap where the dipstick was fastened from underneath. Saw nothing like that in it, so not sure? If there was stuff from break in, the filter should have caught it. Unless the filter was defective, or there was so much that it started bypassing. Which would be kind of hard to believe.

Why the bigger filter? Does it have the same filtering specs as the old one? It is a hydraulic filter and not just an oil filter?

 

[NSMaple1]

Did some quick googling. Looks like OEM filter is 10 micron, that Napa is 16 micron? I would likely stick with a 10.

 

[Andyshine77]

I've had my Speeco since 2007 and it has a lot of time on it. I changed the hydro oil in it for the first time about two years ago, the old fluid looked as good as the new oil, and she sits outside. So no you shouldn't see anything in the fluid at all.

 

[kevin j]

I know there are plenty of people who claim they’ve never had a filter on the machine and it’s lasted 20 years using waste oil from their diesel engines and it works fine etc. etc. that’s a different group and will not be convinced.

to the OP:
cut The old filter open and see what’s inside of it on the outside of the pleated media.
visible is something like 30 or 40 µm just cloudy in oil held up to light. you’ve got 50 plus sized micron chunks if you can see them that well.

Are the particles magnetic? Certain oil additives plus heat plus steel filings will turn to a gold color. what’s the quality of the components overall.

One -year-old oil should not be black and dirty looking. it should be almost clear unless it had gross overheating (200-250f) or serious contamination with water or if it was motor oil. unless there is water contamination which can be avoided by a proper breather system log splitter oil should go longer than the life of the owner. a couple thousand hours on hydraulic oil is not at all unusual if there’s proper filtration and I’ve seen 20,000 hours.

The key is proper filtration and changing the filter when needed so that it’s not going into bypass. make sure the filter is installed the proper direction in and out. if backwards it may have destroyed the internals and not been filtering this whole time

10 or 16 ‘rated’ doesn’t matter. both are well below the visible to the naked eye size and it may not be any difference in the filter. it depends on the beta rating of the filter. it may take out 90% of the 16 microns and only 50% of the 10 µm and still be the same filter. part of it is in the advertising. that’s why the beta 10 rating standard was developed but that’s a whole different topic.

a log splitter is a very crude circuit using constant flow pump with open center valve so that oil is moving through the return filter all the time. essentially you have a built-in filtering system. I would watch the filter keep changing the filters regularly and maybe just let it run for for 30 minutes or something in neutral.

The goal is not to function like an off-line filtration system. those run for hours and hours. the goal here is just take out particles that are large enough to cause catastrophic damage then let the return filter do its normal function over time and clean up the smaller particles.

and the bottom line is the components are crude enough and cheap enough that it’s easier to just run and fix on failure then it is to change the oil and do the oil analysis that would be done on a hydrostatic system that has $1 million worth of pumps and motors and 500-1000 gallons of oil.

 

[bigric954rr]

Did some quick googling. Looks like OEM filter is 10 micron, that Napa is 16 micron? I would likely stick with a 10.

I thinking the stock one was 30 microns And the bigger one was 16 microns the bigger one should filter smaller things. I hope

Maybe I was seeing small air bubbles as I ran the splitter for a little to warm up the oil before I changed it. Who knows it’s sure looked like little metal specks. But the filter should have caught them if I could see they.

But like the one guy posted on here I changed the oil once and installed a new filter just to be safe but the cost of oil and filter was about 65 bucks so might not do that again and if the pump goes out it would be cheaper to just replace the pump than do oil changes a lot

 

[bigric954rr]

The oil was pretty clear or more of a Amber color so it wasn’t burnt

 

[muddstopper]

Just something I ran into once. I bought a new cyl from Northern tool. I wanted to install larger ports so I took the cyl apart before mounting it on the splitter. When I pulled the ram the insides was full of big metal pieces. This came from the factory that way. If I had just used the cyl out of the box, it would have destroyed my hyd circuits. I bored out the ports and cleaned everything up and put it backtogether and its been running for several years now. Metal can get in the hyd systems a lot of ways other than normal wear and tear. The hyd tanks are welded metal and might not have been cleaned properly before filling with oil. Hoses cut with a chopsaw might have not been cleaned before being installed. I have also looked in the bottom of emptied 5gal oil buckets and seen a bunch of sludge. On my Ventrac tractor, the manufacturer recommends filtering the oil before pouring it into the hyd tank. I like changing the filters often, even if I dont always change the oil. I also run a suction filter in the tank, but have read where a lot of folks think that a bad ideal. suction filters are usually around 140 microns so they dont catch the little stuff, but they will get anything like sawdust or bark that might get into the tank when refilling.