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Greetings, my father in law asked me to look at his Scag Tiger Cub model STC48A-19KA, there was a puddle of oil under it. I found a huge mess of oil everywhere, and the hydraulic reservoir was almost completely empty. I cleaned it up the best I could, and refilled the oil, but an initial run is not showing any leak yet. I have been perusing the manual, and I do see some low pressure hydraulic hoses used, so I am keeping an eye on those. I am hoping that the problem is not a pump shaft seal. The machine has about 750 hours on it, he was having it maintained at a dealer but it is getting too expensive.
Is there any place these machines are prone to leak like this? The fluid seemed to be coming from the area of the pumps, but it was everywhere, mixed with grass clippings, a nice mess.
I do see that they sell a seal overhaul kit for the pumps, is that a difficult job to tackle (I have plenty of auto repair experience and tools, nothing on a machine like this though).
Also if it is one of the low pressure hoses, what can be used to replace that? the parts supply websites sell it by the inch, but that seems way expensive. Is this basically like the low pressure hose on a car power steering system?

thanks for any suggestions....

Low pressure is low pressure and high pressure is high and never the twain shall meet. Let's hope it's your low pressure side and you'll be in for an easier fix (usually, in my experience anyway)

Under the plate where the pumps are there is hoses with a clamp 1/4 they get loose and leak quite often on those.

Yes, I could feel those connections under the plate.. Is it a simple matter of removing the 4 bolts to get that top plate off to expose those connections? I can not really see anything with the plate in place... I am hoping it might be something this simple...

you can rotate the hoses to get a small 1\4 wrench in there to tightened them up some have a round hole where u can use a flat screw driver.. but yes just remove those four bolts and it should come off if you cant get to them the other way...

Just use some UV Tracer dye to find the leak source.