Tiffen Aire Tug - first transmission oil change 62 hours

[KGMtech]

For those who don't know, I am retired but work 2 days a week at the local airport doing grounds and building maintenance for the local flight school. We got a new tug for moving the Cessna's and Seminole's, DA40 around the two tarmacs we own. The new Tiffen Aire 730X came into the fleet early December and I just did the 50 hour service, albeit a bit late at 62 hours.

The Tiffen tug uses a John Deere lawn tractor base 730X and is equipped with a fuel injected Kawasaki 2 cylinder FD791 gasoline engine.

The hydrostatic transmission needed the fluid and filter changed. The filter was a pita to remove, and the maintenance hangar mechanics didn't have a strap wrench for me to use, so channel locks it was.

20211230_105112_resized by Ken , on Flickr

-719111095_20211230_105128_1992450_resized by Ken, on Flickr

A Wix 57103 went on and the transmission took about 8 litres of Low Viscosity J20D equivalent (Tuxton brand)

The filter thread was too big to use the filter cutter for the airplanes, so I had to use a hacksaw and aviation snips to free the filter element from the case. No ADBV in these, no bypass, not much inside,
Hope this is interesting for you guys?

 

[AZjeff]

Not much to see on the filter but the machine is interesting. So your feet have to be ambidextrous?

 

[KGMtech]

That's the machine, the seat in the regular position is not used ~ well we don't use it. Primarily because you need very long legs to be able to press the forward pedal. Under the cowl of the hood is a heavy metal bar that braces the hood and wraps down to the JD frame so that 300Lb people won't collapse the hood.

The Tiffen tug seems well made, we trialed a Priceless Aviation tug for about 4 months before we returned it, it was totally unreliable.