There are quite a few videos on YouTube about hydraulic motors and final drive motors. In this Shop Talk Blog post, we’ve picked five of our favorites to share with our readers. From broken final drives to simulations of what goes on inside of a radial piston hydraulic motor, we are certain you’ll find at least one of these to be interesting. Enjoy!

We've got some other blog posts you might be interested in ...

• Autopsy: Bobcat 331 Mini-excavator Final Drive
• Cam Ring Failure in a Final Drive
• Reman Final Drives and Lapping

Changing the Gear Oil

In “Changing the Gear Oil the Linkbelt” from LetsDig18, we see gear oil being drained from the final drive motor on a Linkbelt excavator. What we like about this video is its practicality: it’s not a machine somewhere in a spotless shop where they have access to every tool they need, but rather what most machine owners deal with. And it’s worth mentioning that LetsDig18 is one of our favorite YouTube channels for learning about compact equipment.

Final Drive Service

“Final Drive Service” from Coldest Journey is a chilling tale of changing out the axle oil seals in a final drive hydraulic motor while traveling through the icy wastelands on route to the South Pole. The machine was a Caterpillar D6 bulldozer, and the seals need to be changed because the material is not doing well in the icy cold temperatures they are encountering. Note that the replacement seals were SKF double-lipped silicon seals which had been found to perform well in extremely cold temperatures. That can be a challenge because many rubber and polymer seals can begin to behave like a brittle material at low temps.

John Deere 653E Final Drive Disaster

“John Deere 653E Final Drive Disaster” from MrNFortune just makes us want to cry! This final drive motor is in pitiful condition, with the rollers and balls falling out of bearings. This is truly a final drive disaster, and while it is short it will probably be a video you remember. Poor final drive… it met a terrible end. We’d love to know exactly what happened to it.

Bosch Rexroth - Hägglunds CB motors

In “Bosch Rexroth - Hägglunds CB motors - Functional description” you see a fascinating CGI simulation of what goes on inside one of the Hagglund Geroler motors. This is both informative and entertaining, especially if you’ve never had the opportunity to open up this kind of hydraulic motor.

Black Bruin Hydraulic Motors Operating Principle

In the “Black Bruin Hydraulic Motors Operating Principle” from the Black Bruin channel, you will get a very informative glimpse into what goes on inside one of their radial piston cam lobe motors. Once again, if you’ve never had the chance to take one apart you can still see what goes on inside of one of these complex, powerful motors.

Conclusion

You’ll probably notice we didn’t include any of our own videos in this post. We would like to share with you two of our channels -- Texas Final Drive and Final Drive Parts. While we may not have oil seal changes in icy weather or awesome CGI simulations of motors, we do have some informative videos that you might find helpful.  Let us know in the comments if you have any videos you think we should add to this list.

Texas Final Drive is your partner in providing new or remanufactured final drive hydraulic motors from a single mini-excavator to a fleet of heavy equipment. Call today so we can find the right final drive or hydraulic component for you, or check out our online store to find your O.E.M. manufacturer brand motor now.