Today, we're going to do a short investigation into the filters that I just took off of my tractor. Just did my 50-hour service. We're going to take the three filters off of my machine, the two hydraulic filters and the engine oil filter, crack them open, and check and see what kind of debris they picked up from the inside of my machine during that break-in service interval. So what this thing is, is basically a gigantic can opener where you can tighten down this little knife that goes around and cuts the side of this thing open. If you remember here back, it's been probably three years ago, I did a series about three or four videos like this, cutting open, both manufacturers OEM filters, and some aftermarkets and tearing them apart and looking at the differences inside. So if you find this video interesting, it's worth going back on our channel and finding some of those older videos, because there's interesting stuff here and the differences in filter construction and that kind of stuff that might surprise you. These OEM filters are often the same price or only marginally more expensive than what an aftermarket is. And often the quality of them is notably better. One thing that I notice when cutting these things is the difference in the can themselves.
These things do hang underneath the tractor. They're quite exposed. And when I was cutting open those cheap aftermarket $5 Walmart filters in particular, I was able to do this in almost two turns without fighting through it. And that's important, right? Because these things are exposed on the side of your tractor and it only takes a stick through a filter or something to lose all the oil and do significant damage to your tractor. So check those videos out. I think they're really cool. Opening up a filter like this really tells you something about the health of your engine. As far as I understand, this is actually common practice on airplanes and stuff. Anytime mechanic is changing a filter on an airplane, right, important piece of machinery, they're usually cutting the filter open in order to get the sense of the inside's health. It's not a regular part of our process.
I don't think it's normal that we're going to expect to find concerning things in here. I hope. This is my tractor. So I guess I'm glad to say that there's nothing here that I find totally interesting. Right? It would be interesting to be able to say, look at all these metal filings, but it's great that they're not there because this is my engine at the end of the day. I think we might find more when we dive into the hydraulic filters here. Let's keep going. So inside these hydraulic filters, I think you could see a little bit more about why this break-in interval is important. There's some oil left inside the can here from when I changed this filter. And there are a lot of oil filings inside of this. The silvery flake inside the oil is very obvious. Frankly, looks really cool.
Inside the other filter here, when you look back in, you can find these little called white gray colored flakes, and that is some remnants of liquid gasket. When a lot of these transmissions are put together, they're not put together with old-school paper gaskets, it's a newer liquid gasket material. And when those pieces squeeze together, sometimes some of that gasket material will come out through that seam and eventually break loose and kind of wash around on the inside of your equipment. And these filters are there in order to pick that out, right? This is intended expected stuff at this point, but certainly good to get those things out. And when you go through the pleating in here, I don't see like scary metal filings or anything, but every once in a while I can find what looks like a little piece of gasket material in the filter. So, fortunately, nothing too scary, right?
You can see the importance of this, right? There's a little bit of small debris and stuff in that hydraulic filter. And the silver shavings and stuff in that oil, I think are pretty interesting and telling. There's a reason why so many companies universally recommend these early oil changes on your equipment. Getting this stuff out is important. And if you go through and you check your owner's manual and you look at the next time you're going to be doing these kinds of things. The filters that are put back onto your machine, the clean ones can be there for hundreds of hours afterwards. So you can imagine 50 hours for this one, but maybe 500 for the next one. They're doing their job. There on your machine for a long time. And that's why we're going to encourage you to use quality oils and quality filters on your equipment
Neil from Messick's here to do a little bit of tractor maintenance with you here today. This is my Kubota LX 3310. It's not just a pretty tractor for YouTube videos, I actually do a lot of work at home with it. I'm rounding about 50 hours, 50 hours is a meaningful service interval for your equipment. It is the break in interval, and you're going to go through and drop fluids from your engine and transmission at this point, spin some new filters on there in order to get out all of that initial break in stuff that happens when a machine is new. When those gears first start turning, there's a lot of wear that happens there initially. It's probably the most important service interval that you're going to do. So today we're going to do it on my tractor here, go around and check a couple of different service points and change some fluids. Now before we get started, this should not be the first time that you're servicing your tractor. If you have a loader or a mower deck about every 10 hours you should be hitting those things with a grease gun, going around greasing all the moving points on your loaders and your mower decks. That is one of the primary things that we will look at when we see where on a machine.
