Cub Cadet 7264 Compact very lazy hydrostatic

Good morning all,

I recently picked up a 2004 Cub Cadet 7264 compact tractor. It has a bucket loader on the front and a backhoe on the back. Its in good shape, runs good and the hydraulics for the implements work fine.
The only issue is the hydrostatic is very lazy. Most of the pedal doesnt do much. When I depress it all the way forward the tractor moves but its slow. It will not back up a hill either. When it does move, the hydrostatic is quite noisy. I've driven many hydrostatic tractors and this is not normal. It will free wheel down hill which I know its not supposed to do. I did put the bucket into some dirt, and it would force the bucket into the ground in the forward direction but the hydrostatic was quite loud. It seems like the hydrostatic drive is staving for fluid.
The hydraulic fluid was recently changed out and new filters are on it. Short of the pump being worn out, it has occured to me that these could be the wrong filters, too restrictive. They are NAPA filters, not the cub cadet ones. I also wonder if the wrong fluid is in here, if that could cause this. Any opinion on that is appreciated.

So in short, could the wrong filters cause something like this? Will any hydraulic fluid approved for use in a hydrostatic tractor work for this one? Thanks

This filter & oil change is not the problem, when was the last one ?
A hydro that will roll down a hill is generally shot.
Unless the filter was very much finer than the original it should not cause you any grief.
The wrong oil can froth which will bugger a hydro in no time flat.

Now I am not really trying to be a smart *** but considering the cost or repairing a hydro, i can never see the benefit of going cheap on the filters & oil as they only get changed at about 5 year intervals.
You could still have air trapped in the system also so the first step would be another series of purging & see if it makes a difference.
There are time I have needed to hook up a vacuum pump to get the air out.

Thanks for the reply

I am kind of hesitant to say the hydro is shot at this point because when I put the loader into the ground and pushed it forward the tractor would work hard to push it.
But it is defintely loud. Far louder than hydro ever should be. And very slow.
I will have to go over things and see how I can bleed air out. I dont see any mention of that in the manual at all.

It is a complicated hydraulic system on these tractors.
In theory it should self bleed.
However in practice you can get pockets of air in the system and they will of course compress rather than do work.
So when you are working the hydraulic cylinders you are opening up extra valves so getting better hydraulic oil flow.
Back to the original question.
Why did you change the oil & filter ?
What was the original oil and what did you replace it with ?

Ok so I have an update and somewhat good news....

The guy I bought it from said he changed the hydraulic fluid with ISO 46.....which is a no no for hydrostatic.
So I changed it out, twice, with Traveller premium universal tractor fluid which is for hydrostatic use. After talking to someone, I put all four tires in the air and worked the hydrostatic in both directions for at least 5 minutes. This made a very noticable difference in operation.
After that the tractor operates much more smoothly. Forward direction seems normal now, reverse is slower as expected. I do suspect the hydrostatic pump is a bit worn but will probably serve my needs for a while and I will eventually rebuild it.

I am going to change it out again in a month or so. I drained it and filled it, ran it as mentioned and drained it again. That ISO 46 is too thick and foams so that definitely explains the issues to me.

Here is a picture of it.

So I did a little more figuring out of this machine. Come to find out, part of the issue was the pedal wasnt getting full range of motion. So in short, the tractor wouldnt "try" to back up hills. I noticed that in forward and reverse the pedal hit the floor. So I got to thinking, maybe I should pull the mat and see if it goes farther. It did go farther. So I started thinking the pedal was bent. I took a closer look and noticed there are two bolts that hold the pedal to its linkage. There was a second set of holes that would raise the whole pedal up. Once I made that adjustment thus raising the pedal up, the thing has full range of motion with the matt in place.
Maybe the pedal was slightly bent down from use, which made the lower setting even more useless. I think that lower setting was intended as a limit. Not sure why anyone would want one, but if the pedal was bent it would limit the pedal even more. But the tractor functions normally now. Hope that makes sense.

When you purge the system next time make sure you set the engine to it's lowest speed.
Purging at full speed tends to froth the oil.

Pretendfarmer said:

Ok so I have an update and somewhat good news....

The guy I bought it from said he changed the hydraulic fluid with ISO 46.....which is a no no for hydrostatic.
So I changed it out, twice, with Traveller premium universal tractor fluid which is for hydrostatic use. After talking to someone, I put all four tires in the air and worked the hydrostatic in both directions for at least 5 minutes. This made a very noticable difference in operation.
After that the tractor operates much more smoothly. Forward direction seems normal now, reverse is slower as expected. I do suspect the hydrostatic pump is a bit worn but will probably serve my needs for a while and I will eventually rebuild it.

I am going to change it out again in a month or so. I drained it and filled it, ran it as mentioned and drained it again. That ISO 46 is too thick and foams so that definitely explains the issues to me.

Click to expand...

Hey there Pretendfarmer...I have the same tractor and have had a heck of a time trying to find equivalent Hydrostatic oil for the Cub Cadet brand. Thanks for the post (I'm a newbie). Do you have an update after a couple of months running with new oil/filters? Would you be able to provide the filter brand/part numbers as well? If you ever do a rebuild of the pump, I would be interesting to read all about it. My tractor was inherited from my father-in-law so there is a lot of sentimental value in it but hard to find some parts (ie ball joints). I'm off to change my fluids.

The loud noise could be cavitation, which means that you have air in the system. That seems to be a problem with these hydrostats; they don't self-bleed very well.

On some Cub hydrostats, you can use CIH HyTrans fluid; it's the best hydraulic/transmission fluid on the market, and since some were developed originally by IH, it will work fine. But I advise you to talk with several experts, i.e., CC service mechanics.