General Maintenance Questions

[cpmartin1989]

Morning everyone ... question is in regards to a mini ex I purchased. Model PC35R-8, Serial # F21286

I purchased the operation manual. I am a little confused as all the other machines I have, "old equipment" calls for just generic hydro oil. This is calling for SAE10W ... the company I bought it from has always used ISO32 oil. I currently have 15 gallons of Hyspin AWM-M 32, I would prefer to use this and I have checked that this is an ISO 32 quality oil.

It seems odd that a hydro system would call for SAE 10W ... this is typically oil used in motors, which is why it is throwing me for a loop.

It also uses SAE10W for reduction gears, I would have figured gear oil lube, for say a rear end of a pickup?

 

[John C.]

Lots of different oils used now days. We always used AW46 hydraulic oils in this area but Komatsu went to engine oils in most all their stuff. I don't know of any issues with either. The only time I saw problems was with the bio oils. When I worked for a Cat dealer there were pumps failing at around 5,000 hours when bio was swapped into a machine that had petroleum oil. When in doubt though, I always went with the manufacturers suggestion. I've have had owners that said they wanted the less expensive AW oils for the hydraulics anyway. The 10wt in the gear reductions is new to me. Everything in the past was 30wt. Maybe it's because of the small size of the machine.