Yes. It does smell like gear oil, but is very thin, thinner than any 75-90 I've dealt with.
So the last time I changed final drive oil in my excavators and Kubota track skid steer I took Niges advice and used FFS. No, it does not say. And, no, Bobcat isn't saying sh|t either.
). Since the drive motor doesn't have the middle plug to check the level, getting the correct amount in is somewhat important. I think the manual says replacement at 500 hrs, so at $40 I just use theirs instead of fretting too much. Now, if you're doing multiple machines every three months then I get it! That's gonna add up fast. I know on our JD 35D we just use 80w90 full synthetic gear oil and have had no problems at all... but I was able to cross reference it somewhere.It's not at all the cost that has me buggered up, it's the fact that we are snowed completely up, have a great Cenex hub here that carries every fluid imaginable, but this stupid Bobcat uses fairy dust infused oil. The machine belongs to a friend of mine, and I asked him when he'd serviced those motors last since we had those issues on ours last spring. He says no idea, hasn't since he's owned it, over 600 hours, no idea when it was serviced before. I dug out the manual, checked both, there might have been 5 oz total left in each. Manual says "Contact your Bobcat dealer for oil". Well, we're in the middle of a blizzard, he had to move snow with it all day today, closest dealer is 50 miles away on no travel advised roads. If the aholes at Bobcat would have just used 75-90 or TDTO, we wouldn't even be having this conversation.I think I usually pay around $20/bottle for it. It's handy that Bobcat's version is measured at the precise amount you need and comes with a little hose (woohoo... how nice of Bobcat to include a nickel hose
