Drive moters

How often do you guys change the oil on the drive motor? Do you go by the book or sooner? My book has called for 1000 hours but I been changing them at 500 because they're dark and black n stinks soon as hub start getting hot I change oil. Was curious on you guys. I currently own and run a deere 333G

If oil is dark and noticable viscosity change dump the oil. In my opinion compact equipment isn't as robust it's larger counterparts and the maintenance schedule lead me to believe compact machines are not intended for the machines to be run at 100 percent duty cycle. I guess what I'm trying to say is most customers I have beat the sh*t out of them and stick to normal maintenance ( if that ). When there use of machine is severe duty. Examples deep mud, dusty site, below freezing operation, picking near capacity. Always running machine in near stall conditions. Oils cheap final drives are not

A lot of manuals will state to change oil every X hours or Y Months, whichever comes first. e.g. every 500 hours or 6 months, 1000 hours or one year, etc.
Maybe a switch from hour-based to time-based changes might help..?

All the MTLs and excavators 8T and under that we look after, we change the final drive oils every service ie. every 250hrs. In fact all excavators, no matter what size that do a considerable amount of tracking, we recommend the same.
We have one particular customer with a large fleet of excavators from mini up to 40T. For the past 15 years we have changed final drive oils every service and, so far, we have not had a single final drive failure.
As mentioned above, oil is cheap, iron isn't.

Nige said:

A lot of manuals will state to change oil every X hours or Y Months, whichever comes first. e.g. every 500 hours or 6 months, 1000 hours or one year, etc.
Maybe a switch from hour-based to time-based changes might help..?

Click to expand...

Good point there. Yes I may not put a ton of hours on the machine scince I bought it brand new in nov 2017 n here we are jan 2020 with a whopping 525 hours on it. Hence being said it was leaking oil I took it to dealer. Warranty covered the hub face leak n caused me to learn about this oil change sooner than book call for. Unfortunately there's no time just hourly

Cmark said:

All the MTLs and excavators 8T and under that we look after, we change the final drive oils every service ie. every 250hrs. In fact all excavators, no matter what size that do a considerable amount of tracking, we recommend the same.
We have one particular customer with a large fleet of excavators from mini up to 40T. For the past 15 years we have changed final drive oils every service and, so far, we have not had a single final drive failure.
As mentioned above, oil is cheap, iron isn't.

Click to expand...

I believe I may just start doin that because I've noticed my drive moter has been getting pretty dang warm at the 300 hour mark n got warmer towards the current hour mark only when I'm using it hard running the tree shear or dirt work etc. when I'm in the mud n it will cook the mud on it fast n a steam when I get out but it has never got hot enough to burn my hand but surely got dang warm but there has been days when we are driving posts it don't get warm at all. All its doin carrying post driver and moving itself at an idle or low rpm

Joe Fick said:

Good point there. Yes I may not put a ton of hours on the machine scince I bought it brand new in nov 2017 n here we are jan 2020 with a whopping 525 hours on it. Hence being said it was leaking oil I took it to dealer. Warranty covered the hub face leak n caused me to learn about this oil change sooner than book call for. Unfortunately there's no time just hourly

Click to expand...

Sorry I was thinking of Cat Manuals that contain both. FYI the intervals Cat recommends are: -
250 hours or every 3 months
500 hours or every 6 months
1000 hours or annually
2000 hours or every 2 years.

Cmark said:

All the MTLs and excavators 8T and under that we look after, we change the final drive oils every service ie. every 250hrs. In fact all excavators, no matter what size that do a considerable amount of tracking, we recommend the same.
We have one particular customer with a large fleet of excavators from mini up to 40T. For the past 15 years we have changed final drive oils every service and, so far, we have not had a single final drive failure.
As mentioned above, oil is cheap, iron isn't.

Click to expand...

Agree 100%. We have smaller machines here that track a lot and we change the oil in the finals every 250 hours, for us that's probably about every 3 weeks - but that's where the manual recommends probably every 1000 hours or 1 year.

Joe Fick said:

I currently own and run a deere 333G

Click to expand...

If you have owned since new it should have had the planetary oil changed (initial service) at 50 hrs (and I would have done a oil sample at that time). On our machines we change planetaries at every engine oil change and take samples then as well. If it were up to me I would change them every 250 hrs (with samples). Like Cmark said, oil is cheap.

I did the 50 hour mark but didn't do the sample speaking of samples I did the engine oil. I still haven't got the results back. I guess I need to find someone else to do it