I thought I would post this for anyone that has a Husky YTH 150 tractor with a Hydro Gear 319-0650 transaxle.
I noticed my tractor was getting a bit sluggish when I put it into reverse. I looked up a lot of information on the net about this transaxle and found it it was meant to be a non serviceable unit and worse yet, the unit is no longer available. That said a number of folks have removed the transaxle, dumped the old fluid out of it and replaced it with 20W-50 motor oil. This seemed to work for many folks but I really didn't want to get into removing the tranny. I did however decide to at least take a look at the thing so I removed the rear panel on the frame. (The one that the bypass control lever sticks through). There was only 4 bolts holding it in place so I figured what the heck...
Low and behold, once I pulled the panel off, the tranny was sitting right there and the breather tube was a cinch to pull off. I simply removed the breather nut and tube (plastic breather nut with rubber tube on top) and used a small outboard motor lower unit hand pump to pump the old oil out. It was really nasty after 300+ hours. I wasn't able to get every last bit of oil out but I did get most of it. The manufacture says the unit holds 81 oz of fluid or just over 2 liters. I filled a 2 liter bottle almost to the top so I figure I removed well over 75% of the old oil. I can change the oil again after a few hours of running to dilute the little bit of old oil that was left. I used the cheapest oil I could find and I want to make 2 or 3 changes over the next 10 hours or so. Then I will replace the oil with a full synthetic...
The whole project took about 45 minutes.
Just remember to be careful not to let any dirt get into the tranny and fill it to 1 1/8" from the top. Don't over fill it!
JJ