Adding gear oil to a stock transaxle

Hello everyone, putting together a mower for hooning around some trails at buddys farm. Not locking the diff or running big tires. Iv got a 15hp briggs I/C and a Spicer 6 speed. Gonna be running a 1:1 pully ratio, and wondering if anyone has simply added gear oil into their transaxle? Would I be able to remove one "spring/ball" retaining screw and add gear oil to the grease thats currently inside? Any insight would be great! Thanks

I haven’t converted a transaxle to gear oil, but having a hydro tractor with oil lubrication you won’t see any issues with doing it. The 633 ropers also run oil IIRC.

If you’re running 1:1 I think it would be better to just pull the transaxle apart, clean the old grease out and add oil. Grease is better at low speed but oil lubes better at higher speed. Make sure to replace all your seals while you’re in there because you will get leaks otherwise.

@Stretch44875 is the master of that from what I've read, maybe he'll have some better input than I for you. There's a few threads on it around here check the transaxle section/use the search feature.

From what I know if you want to run gear oil you need to add seals and or o-ring the axle bushings and use alot of RTV or equivalent sealant or it will end up leaking out around the axles. I've read several threads where guys add a little oil to the grease, I'd think Lucas Oil Stabilizer would work really well and have been planning on adding it myself.

You're best to just split the trans or risk dropping the ball/spring in and have to open it up anyways plus then you can add a fitting to vent it also.

Hope this helps some.

I put some oil with the grease in my spicer 5 speed/ vari drive combo. I just get a little oil dripping out the axles with just the felt seals on the axles. It just wets up the dirt on the rims. Nothing serious. I did put sealant on the case halves though. That is probably a minimum to do for adding any kind of oil or oil mix in the case.