Craftsman DYT 4000 Maintenance

Haven't pulled one of them down so don't really know.
manual gear boxes are either filled with grease which goes hard with time & needs replacing or diff oil which should also be replaced occasionally.
It will all depend upon usage, storage, local weather conditions etc etc etc.

If I have read things right, you have an MST type tranny which takes 16 oz of 80/90 gear oil according to the manual mentioned earlier.
Some variants don't have a fill hole either, you put the oil in the inverted upper half then fit the lower & button it up.
Download the manual & read it, it is not very long.
Your section is only about 8 pages long.
The manual does show both a fill & drain port , however it is general for all MST 200's so some variants will have them & some won't.


As for hydro boxes, they are built down to a price so they do not have any method of oil changing other than taking them out & tipping them upside down.
Most push mower engines are the same you have to tip them upside down to change the oil.

Manual boxes have a reasonably easy life for a gear box and will run forever with little lube provided you do not shift while moving which breaks off the shift key.
That by far is the most common repair I do on them followed by replacing the F-N-R gear set & bushes.

Hydros OTOH have a finite life just sitting there in neutral.
Eventually the valve chest wears groves in the valve plate and the oil leaks out of the pump or motor so it whines & goes nowhere.
Thus the mower companies get them without any means of changing the oil which makes them cheaper.
And of course they can be marketed as "maintenance free for life sealed units" which Joe Average seems to think is a good idea, till they realize just how short "life" can be.
The 100 series JD's seem to be good for around 900 hours on their Hydro Gears judging by those in my service run.
Just finished a YTH Husqvarna ( top of the range) hydros dead at 850 hours.

Got some Cub Cadets with 11,000 hours on them, hydros going strong, but they have external filters so they get their oil & filters changed at 500 hours and there is 4 gallons of oi in there.

This is like a differential in your car. Rear wheel drive. Has a fill hole but no drain hole. the 80w90 will last a very long time in a mower so why install a drain plug for the one time it may need to be changed. Remember the lawn mowers are 10-year mowers and in that time would not really need to be changed. This is the thinking for almost everything built today. If you can produce it cheaper then you must or you will not survive as a company.

This is an excellent explanation. Thanks Blaze.

That makes total sense to me.

I was thinking about pulling the deck off of this lawn tractor and replacing the pulleys and either the bearings in the spindles or the spindles as an assembly. I see deck rebuilt kits on eBay for $60 and $70 which is appealing, but I certainly do not want to do the work and install substandard parts. Would something like this be worth purchasing?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/CRAFTSMAN-...ur7xv6lycutPIr316lL6o1yxOXnXrdPixSRY3FSwNOg==

Anthony

I have purchased and used things like that before with no problems. Now with the one, you posted without pictures I would skip.

Thanks Blaze. There are many other kits available FS on eBay, but this one states that the part brand is "Craftsman / Husqvarna" so my hope is that these are not "unbranded" parts, but OEM ones. Is there a specific brand I should be trying to purchase?

Thank you!!

Anthony

AYP