2001 L4610D HST oil leaking from propeller shaft

I am new to the forum and would like to say thanks for all the info from the experts on this site. I appologize if this has been covered, but I couldn't find anything on it.

I have hydraulic fluid running out of the two little holes in the center of the propeller shaft. I would assume it's the seal there in the propeller shaft itself, is there a possibility there is another problem? I would appreciate any info that would help me with diagnosing and repairing the leak. If it is a seal in the shaft how difficult is it to replace?

Thanks again in advance.

I sure was hoping someone on here had run into this problem before, and could share some insight on this problem.

Thanks for the replies. CTMike, I think you may have a different model than mine. Mine is a HST and has hydraulic fluid is pumped through the shaft to the front end. It's leaking about mid way through two small holes in the propeller shaft. Here is a pic of where it is leaking from on the shaft.

North Idaho Wolfman said:

Your tractor does not pump hydraulic fluid through the shaft.
You have 2 problems, #1 you have a oil seal or seals that is bad, there are several seals in there, #2 your missing the bolts that are supposed to be in that hole.

Get the WSM for your tractor and it will spell out what is involved in changing the seals, some models require the tractor to be split to replace the seals.

Click to expand...

Ouch! I sure hope it doesn't have to be split to replace. I am a little bit confused now because if there is no fluid in shaft why are there seals in center of the shaft? Also I found a diagram online that shows fluid running through the shaft to the front end. I'm not trying to question your knowledge, I'm just trying to get a better understanding of how it works. Thanks again for the help.

Thanks Wolfman,

I appreciate the diagrams. I had a misunderstanding of how it worked. I thought I saw a diagram at some point in the past that showed fluid being passed in the shaft to the front end, and made an assumption that the internal seals where the shaft joins together are bad and allowing the fluid to leak out.

Thanks for the clarification.

What happened when we tried to pull the shaft out it didn't seem to want to move, and not knowing what was holding it we didn't want to force it too much. So we decided to seperate the bell housing from the HST, but it would only go about 4 inches and stop, my shop manual wasn't very clear and I wasn't sure why, so next we sepearated it from the back of the HST (wasn't necessary). Then finally we sepereated it at the back of the transmission and found a gear wedged onto another drive shaft coming from the HST that drives the rear end; it was moving forward about 4inches and hitting the back on the plate on the HST and stopping.

Thanks again for all of the help, the tractor is back together and seems to be working fine with no leaks so far. I'm in hopes that it is fixed. Hopefully the notes in the pics below can be read.











Maybe I should repost this on my original post about the hydraulic leak coming from the propeller shaft seals. The only reason I even had to deal with the issue with the HST pump and motor was because when I bagged up the HST to keep it clean after I had taken the tranny apart, we inadvertantly tilted it and the motor and pump slid out inside the bag we have it wrapped in (should have taken pics, lesson learned).

P.S. I posted this in a couple of threads because I had asked questions in a couple of threads related to the leaking seals, and wanted to post the outcome in case someone didn't read the other tread.