550 dozer, air in radiator, milky oil coming out of the starter!

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R1PERK
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Location: California, KY 41007

550 dozer, air in radiator, milky oil coming out of the starter!

Post by R1PERK » Mon Mar 19, 2018 8:41 pm

Just purchased a 550, started great, sounds perfect. BUT, a lots of tiny bubbles in the radiator, milky oil in the transmission and milky oil coming out of the starter.
Still moves forward and back, blade works perfect.
I'm thinking possibly air leaks in the cylinders into the cooling system and possibly forcing water into the transmission cooler.
Any advice of course it's very welcome.
Rick Perkins
California, KY 41007
JD 550 dozer sn 268006T

Jim B
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Re: 550 dozer, air in radiator, milky oil coming out of the starter!

Post by Jim B » Tue Mar 20, 2018 10:12 am

For a 550 you might get more responses to your problems if you move to the late model support forum. There may be some similar cases over there that might help you diagnose this.

It sounds like you may have a couple issues, an engine cooling system issue and a transmission issue. The bubbles in the engine coolant might be a compression leak into the water jacket somewhere. I believe your transmission cooler is air to oil, mounted in front of the radiator, so the likely hood of getting coolant into the transmission oil won't seem very high. It may have water in the transmission oil from condensation or other contamination.

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Lavoy
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Re: 550 dozer, air in radiator, milky oil coming out of the starter!

Post by Lavoy » Tue Mar 20, 2018 10:19 am

I moved to the post for him.
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Parts and restoration for antique and late model John Deere crawlers.
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Jim B
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Re: 550 dozer, air in radiator, milky oil coming out of the starter!

Post by Jim B » Tue Mar 20, 2018 4:42 pm

Thanks Lavoy.

R1PERK,
I apologize for my error in my earlier post; your 550 oil cooler is in the bottom tank, so yes it could get coolant into the transmission oil. Are you seeing oil in the radiator? Often the oil pressure is higher than radiator pressure and would force some oil into the coolant.

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amos
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Re: 550 dozer, air in radiator, milky oil coming out of the starter!

Post by amos » Wed Mar 21, 2018 5:34 am

R1PERK wrote:
Mon Mar 19, 2018 8:41 pm
Just purchased a 550, started great, sounds perfect. BUT, a lots of tiny bubbles in the radiator, milky oil in the transmission and milky oil coming out of the starter.
Still moves forward and back, blade works perfect.
I'm thinking possibly air leaks in the cylinders into the cooling system and possibly forcing water into the transmission cooler.
Any advice of course it's very welcome.
Will address each issue in order:
Bubbles in radiator:Combustion pressure leak. Head cracked/warped,bad head gasket,bad seal ring on cylinder liner or combination there of. Rebuild engine.
Milky oil in transmission:water intrusion contaminated oil. Drain,flush,filter change,fill with new oil and evaluate for more water intrusion.
Milky oil coming out of the starter: front transmission seal leaking. Big job to get to it:either remove engine of remove back end of unit.
Sounds like you have a good project dozer. You're looking at many,many hours and probably some serious coin to repair it.Worst part is the transmission seal as other seals on the back end are probably shot as well. Then you move onto brakes and a big ol basket of parts.
Engine re-build will be in the $4000.00 to $6000.00 range(that's just for parts and typical job shop services for head machine work etc) and if you go that route you can pull the engine to get to the transmission seal issue.
What to do? Either go big and have a good but expensive rebuilt dozer or sell as is for what you can get and cut your losses.Of all internet auction services for heavy equipment purplewave auction does the least comprehensive eval(basically they take a lot of pics and a video of the machine operating. They do NOT check functionality,fluid conditions,etc) and your dozer will probably sell fairly strong there. But you also found issues so you have to decide what path to take.
Amos
Pushin hard or diggin deep life is good.
What's ahead is what matters. What's behind is already done.
A fool of a man is he who doesn't ask questions...
God gave us 2 ears and 1 mouth for a reason...

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