Am I the only one who got burned by that cheap hydraulic oil?

I figured I'd save some cash on a big job last month and bought a 55 gallon drum of the no-name hydraulic oil from a surplus place. Paid $180 for it compared to $450 for the name brand stuff. After about 60 hours of running my 8-inch cutterhead dredge, the pump started sounding rough. Pulled the filter and it was full of black sludge. Now I'm looking at a $1,200 pump rebuild and probably a full system flush. Has anyone else tried cutting corners on fluids and regretted it?

3 comments

3 Comments

ryan_gibson841mo ago

...and the worst part is it's not even just the money. I had a buddy who bought a whole pallet of that cheap stuff for his fleet of farm tractors, figured he'd save a bundle. Ran it through his old Ford 5000 for about a season and then the transmission started slipping real bad. Opened it up and the clutches were just gone, all that gritty sludge acted like sandpaper. He ended up buying a whole used transmission for $2,500 and had to pay a guy to swap it in since he's not much of a mechanic himself. That "savings" turned into a pretty expensive lesson about how those cheap oils skip the anti-wear additives or use some kind of recycled base stock that just breaks down fast under heat.

gavin_kelly911mo ago

Had a buddy try that with off-brand hydraulic oil for his excavator... within a week the main pump seized up and cost him three grand to fix.

murphy.linda19d ago

Three grand for one pump seems pretty steep unless it was a brand new excavator or something. I've run cheap hydraulic oil in my old Case backhoe for years now and haven't had a single issue, just change it a little more often than the fancy stuff. Your buddy might have just gotten unlucky or maybe that off-brand stuff was already contaminated when he bought it. I'm not saying all cheap oil is good, but I think sometimes people blame the oil when it could've been a worn out pump that was already on its last legs.