I said I'd post on how well it went, and so far it has went rather nicely.
I liberated a 5-gallon pot and a candy thermometer from the missus, filled two tanks of propane, and had my handy turkey fryer base ready to go. I drained about 12 gallons of HyTran from the tractor into clean buckets, poured those into the stainless pot to heat, and using the candy thermometer heated it to 225 degrees. I poured the first 5 gallons of hot oil back into the tractor, let it sit for 15 minutes, then drained and repeated to melt and boil off any ice that might have still been in the case. The final time I also pulled the filter and added it and the overpressure screen plug to the boiling oil. I then re-used that filter and screen for the final fill-up.
Hydraulics move nicely, no freezing or pump cavitation even at -5 degrees. Since I'm what you might call cheap and I call thrifty, I've a new filter but am waiting for the next time I need to drain to use it.
OK, a few points to note.
1) Water boils at 212 degrees, and the oil won't go above that until the water is boiled off. Get above 250 and you're boiling off additives. Get above the flash point of the oil (somewhere in the 450 range) and you're setting your shop on fire, which will get you talked about. The thermometer is necessary and so is your attention.
1a) Water flashing to steam at the bottom of a pot of oil will make for a bubble that rises and, like all bubbles, then pops and sprays a bit of fluid around. This fluid happens to be hydraulic oil and well above boiling. Protect your hands, face, and eyes.
2) Using a standard 5-gallon bucket to catch the cold oil is fine, but very few plastic products handle 200-degree oil. Those 2-gallon jugs of hydraulic oil from Tractor Supply will, in fact, melt if you pour 200-degree oil in them and spread those two steaming gallons all over your shop floor, which is why the hot oil went back into the tractor directly from the stainless pot.
3) Oil expands when hot, just like most liquids. In a 5-gallon pot roughly 3 gallons at a time is a good start. Use more and, as it expands, it tends to seep past the rivets holding the pot handles, which then has oil running down the outside of your pan to the open flame.
4) There are digital candy thermometers today that might make your wife forget you're using her kitchen items to boil hydraulic oil. Amazon, as an example, has a wide selection of replacements and often times has free shipping. Whatever you borrow, return in better condition or replace with something better. Or just buy what you want from there and don't steal the wife's pots and pans. Up to you.
5) Two boiling cycles on the 12 or so gallons the 560 had to offer took less than one 20-lbs bottle of propane. At -5 ambient temp three gallons of hydraulic oil went from molasses to gasoline viscosity in around 15 minutes. I did the whole 12 gallons twice on a single outdoor grill tank, which is about $12 worth of propane.
If you can keep the oil clean, have a clean place to work, this is by far the best way to unfreeze a frozen tractor.
Full Disclosure: I read about this in an account of the Finns versus the Russians in World War 2. The Finns used to drain the oil from their air-cooled radial aircraft engines after a mission, and would then heat it in tin jugs over a fire and pour it back into the aircraft just before the next take-off cycle. The Finns had their aircraft start in -40 temps consistently.
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Today's Featured Article - The Cletrac General GG and the BF Avery A - A Bit of History - by Mike Ballash. This article is a summary of what I have gathered up from various sources on the Gletrac General GG and the B. F. Avery model A tractors. I am quite sure that most of it is accurate. The General GG was made by the Cleveland Tractor Company (Cletrac) of Cleveland, Ohio. Originally the company was called the Cleveland Motor Plow Company which began in 1912, then the Cleveland Tractor Company (1917) and finally Cletrac.
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