Hi Mark,The Identification Decal is missing from my unit, Probably blown to heaven by an angry water blaster. I read that item you posted, very interesting , the oil definitely does have a used by date, it is doing a lot of HOT work plus there is not a lot of it. You hear a lot about SYNTHETIC OIL, I have carried out test on it and believe me it is all sales hype. I have 5 motorcycles, I do Adventure riding , "road off road" On one of my bikes I hit a big climb up a very rugged mountain, 4000RPM 1ST GEAR loose rocky uneven track, track goes up and down like steps up the mountain, I am locked in that 1st gear for around 10 minutes, My engine oil pressure drops off to ZERO because of the heat BUILD-UP from the AIR COOLED ENGINE. When this happens I stop for a couple of minutes to allow it to cool then continue my climb again. I have tried all the FLASH EXPENSIVE SYNTHETIC OIL [ $50:00 a liter ] and they are no better than the standard oils designed for Air Cooled wet clutch motorcycles. What I'm saying is use STANDARD level [ cheap ] 10w - 50w engine oil in the pump side of your transaxle---- the colour of the bottle it comes out of is not important, Apparently there are two other problems with that mower. 1. The front engine pulley which drives the transaxle belt , This pulley wear out badly and as a result the belt is not being driven on the sides of the belt , it in trying to drive on the narrow inner surface of the belt , lot of slipping going on down under / up front ! 2. On that transaxle there are different length shift levers,depending on which mower it is fitted to. The long lever causes the shift shaft to wear because of the weight hanging down on one side, As a result the seal can't do it's job and air gets into the oil and you loose power / speed. I plan to fabricate a new lever out of Aluminum and also drill pretty holes in it to make it as light as possible without it being weak. Also I will fit a fixed bush in it to locate the Shift rod. Along with this I am going to try and locate an Extension spring hanging down from the floor pan to hook around the shift lever rod so as to hold the weighht off the shift lever. Also the impute shaft has slight up and down movement, I will shim this to again help the seal running on it. Every litte thing helps. Between the Pump side and the Differential side there are two seals located back to back, I will polish the shaft they run on. I will replace all the seals hoping to get long life from it. I would love to replace the Rubber Bellows but I will have to shop in the USA for it I think sEEYA!wES!
