Re: Foamy Gear Oil

Posted by ScottyHOMEy on October 31, 2009 at 08:51:02 from (71.241.193.92):

In Reply to: Foamy Gear Oil posted by Dellbertt on October 31, 2009 at 07:12:10:

I never know about Ol' Bob. Lord knows, he puts a lot of thought and work into his analyses, and some seem spot on and some seem a little sketchy. I've had him bookmarked since the first time I stumbled across his site five or six years ago. His stuff is usually helpful and always interesting.

An antifoaming additive in an oil will cut down on the froth, certainly as it relates to air, but getting rid of water being whipped up is a whole different matter than weakening air bubbles. (Like I said in the earlier post on the subject, I'm no engineer and I don't know if the anti-foaming agent suppresses the formation of bubbles in the first place, or works by affecting the surface-tension properties of the oil to allow any bubbles to burst more easily.) The air bubbles, if they form at all, go off into free air. If the stuff does foam up with air, those bubbles will eventually disappear after the agitation is stopped (the same way Bob's little mini-gear boxes cleared up between his test runs). Water, though, has no such place to go, and will generally stay in suspension with the whipped up oil in a frothy soup like you found. There is a point at which you could have more water than can be suspended with the oil and, once the agitation is stopped, that excess amount is what will settle to the bottom and come out the drain first.

That leads to the suggestion that you'll see in other threads about foamy gear oil (and other threads from folks asking if the seat platform/tranny covers on the bigger tractors should get hot enough to be uncomfortable -- they will if you work them long and hard enough), that a mild case of water can be cured with a few days of good hard work. If you get the oil hot enough with heavy work, small amounts of water will evaporate out of the mix and leave you with clearer oil. Tractors that don't get worked a lot or hard will accumulate water (from condensation or, on some tractors,getting in around the shifter) faster than you can cook it out by working it.

My partner in crime wouldn't allow it, but I've thought of a Bob-like experiment to test that theory. It would involve using her double boiler (so as to avoid setting things on fire) on the kitchen range . I suppose I could use the side burner on my grill so as not to stink up the kitchen. Anyway, I'd have water boiling in the bottom, and in the top I'd have some of that frothy, watery gear oil that I'd have captured. Seems to me that that kind of heat (no hotter than the 200*+ of the free steam in the double boiler should boil/evaporate out the water that is suspended in the oil. Evidence would include a clearing up of the oil and a decrease in volume and weight equal to the amount of water that was boiled out.

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