# winter weight hydraulic oil?



## hellion (Aug 8, 2011)

Have taken delivery Cat 289D ctl. Does anyone have recommendations or thoughts about putting lighter weight hydraulic oil in for northern Ohio winters or is it a waste of time and money? Using loader to push a 10' kage.


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## peteo1 (Jul 4, 2011)

Never known anyone to change the hydraulic oil just because it gets cold out. I'd run it as is if it were me. We ran a ton of Cat equipment last winter in subzero temps and never had a hydraulic problem.


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## dieselss (Jan 3, 2008)

Keep what's in there and just warm it up


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## Mark Oomkes (Dec 10, 2000)

Does northern Ohio get that cold?


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## rrvsnow (Nov 22, 2014)

We frequently push snow on subzero temps here in northern nd, always have run factory specs on all oils, never had a problem. Just let machines warm up sufficiently before use. Pushed one night last winter with air temps of negative 31, no issues, just longer warm up times.


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## hellion (Aug 8, 2011)

Mark Oomkes;1892325 said:


> Does northern Ohio get that cold?


I doubt it's any colder than your area. After the lake froze over last winter we did get colder than Detroit many days. I thought I seen in my Cat op manual something about using lighter weight hydro oil in very cold weather but it wasn't very specific about how cold. We ran backhoes and dozers back in the 70's and 80's and didn't worry about it and had no problems. But I know pressures and tolerances have changed since then.


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## hellion (Aug 8, 2011)

Thanks everyone for the inputs. I see a lot of you have a ton of experience and I respect your knowledge.


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## White Gardens (Oct 29, 2008)

In heavyequipment, I wouldn't fret about it too much. It gets pretty expensive to change your fluid unless you can cleanly reclaim what you have in the machine every time you switch the hydro fluid. 

Now, in our dump with central hydro system, we use an isolated 32 oil for plowing because the only constant duty it sees is in the winter time. 



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