jlipscomb71
New member
This is a third opinion question, where I am trying to decide between the well informed opinion of one and the well informed opposite opinion of another.
I picked up my DF250 after 300 hour service and long story short ran into a service manager overruling a mechanic who was a mechanic. It took a bit to unfold so at first I only had the supervisor's opinion. The picture below right was the basis of the disagreement. The mechanic showed me the picture on his phone, which got a scowl from the supervisor and detailed explanation. The supervisor said if the drive shift housing top isn't leaking don't replace it which was not. He said something like it looks bad but it is a pretty stout part, they cleaned it up and put something on it to protect it better, and said the corrosion has a long way to go to cause a failure, and then started talking about how this seemingly simple fix goes wrong. I got the gist. Put a steel tool on an aluminum part, apply a lot of pressure and the corrosion won't cause the problem. Mostly other than removing plugs and changing gear oil, he said don't expose gears in good working order to an open top. Sounds reasonable. When the mechanic was using the tractor to put my boat trailer on my hitch it turns out he hadn't thought the boss was right. The mechanic was so adamant he said if I bought him a tool, below left, he'd do it at his house. The mechanic was all about replacing the housing top because the way I tend to engine flushing the explanation for the corrosion is caused by boat storage in a lift over salt water, not after use hygiene. He thinks the tool would work fine now, maybe not with more corrosion. I asked him if the top broke up like the supervisor warned would I have to do a full rebuild. He said, "That's why you turn it upside down when you do it, and clean the crap out of it before putting new oil back in." Sounds reasonable. If you were me, what would you do?
I picked up my DF250 after 300 hour service and long story short ran into a service manager overruling a mechanic who was a mechanic. It took a bit to unfold so at first I only had the supervisor's opinion. The picture below right was the basis of the disagreement. The mechanic showed me the picture on his phone, which got a scowl from the supervisor and detailed explanation. The supervisor said if the drive shift housing top isn't leaking don't replace it which was not. He said something like it looks bad but it is a pretty stout part, they cleaned it up and put something on it to protect it better, and said the corrosion has a long way to go to cause a failure, and then started talking about how this seemingly simple fix goes wrong. I got the gist. Put a steel tool on an aluminum part, apply a lot of pressure and the corrosion won't cause the problem. Mostly other than removing plugs and changing gear oil, he said don't expose gears in good working order to an open top. Sounds reasonable. When the mechanic was using the tractor to put my boat trailer on my hitch it turns out he hadn't thought the boss was right. The mechanic was so adamant he said if I bought him a tool, below left, he'd do it at his house. The mechanic was all about replacing the housing top because the way I tend to engine flushing the explanation for the corrosion is caused by boat storage in a lift over salt water, not after use hygiene. He thinks the tool would work fine now, maybe not with more corrosion. I asked him if the top broke up like the supervisor warned would I have to do a full rebuild. He said, "That's why you turn it upside down when you do it, and clean the crap out of it before putting new oil back in." Sounds reasonable. If you were me, what would you do?
