Changed the engine oil and hydraulic fluid on my 25 ton dirty hand tools log splitter this afternoon. I’ve done it before but it’s been a while so I was a little bit out of practice with it. It definitely didn’t go as smooth as I would’ve liked. Couple of things I noticed-the capacity amounts referenced in the manual seem to not be very true to life, as it seemed like the oil would start to overflow after less than the minimum amount was put in. For reference, I did the oil change on the flat surface of my garage. The manual references 20 ounces of engine oil so I put that amount in after I had drained the old oil. I would say after about 15 ounces it started coming back on me. I let it drain until it was not dripping anymore. Put the cap on and called it good. Then started doing the hydraulic fluid. After draining it and then putting on a new oil filter for it, I began putting in the new oil. The manual specifies that you put in 4 gallons and then you put the splitter through a couple of cycles and then put an additional gallon in. Well, just under the 4 gallon mark it started overflowing. I’m glad that I had put down a sheet of plastic ahead of time because it would’ve been a real mess. I was able to siphon out the excess oil and was able to get the oil level to be within the OK range. ToMorrow I will run the splitter for a few cycles and the check the hydraulic oil level again to make sure there is still a good level in there. Just wondering if this is a common experience for people when they are changing their splitter fluids. I’m wondering if there is residual fluids that essentially cannot be drained unless of course you have the splitter tilted. I would’ve figured there would been a bit of fluid left, but the amount with especially the hydraulic fluid was really surprising. Thanks in advance for any info you can give me!
Engine oil is probably fine. 20 ounces sounds a little bit on the heavy side assuming it’s around a 5 to 6 hp range. Hydraulic oil depends on how much is trapped in the cylinder and the rest of the system that doesn’t drain by gravity and where the drain is on the tank whether it’s on the bottom. Just run it and double check your levels you’ll be fine
