Opinions Please

I was plowing snow this morning with a LX565 skidloader and all a sudden I heard a funny noise. I was just pulling into the shop so I turned off the engine and got out to investigate. I walked around the back and saw oil dripping out under the machine. Well I opened the back and I noticed that the hydraulic oil filter was loose. No idea how this happened? Could have been much worse I know. My question is. There is alot of oil in the engine compartment. I opened up the access hole in plate on the bottom to let the oil run out but still alot of oil incompartment and on the engine. I'm worried about it catching on fire. How can I clean up the engine compartment?

Thanks for the help

dont blame you for your concern , whats the weather doing where you are? i would spray the engine compartment with degreaser and power wash it, but dont do it if its freezing there

You do need to clean it out,but I would wait for spring.You loader is dsl,so your eng temp. won't be near as hot as a gas machine.Your fire chances are very low.

spray it with simple green and wash with a hose

What about the funny noise? Was it lack of oil in the engine?Is the engine OK would be my biggest worry.

If its freezing mop it out with rags the best you can. About all you can do until you can wash it out.

Take the rear belly pan off. If you've got oil sitting up in the front pan near the hydraulic valve, then you're going to have to get down in there and clean the drains out that are just below the control levers. If it's not wet up there I wouldn't worry about it...
Anyhow... clean the rear part with a steam jenny or at very least a garden hose and HOT water. Be carefull not to direct water at the relay box on the left rear of the cab or any other electrical parts. Just wash the engine down and clean everything up as best you can. Clean the rad and hydraulic cooler while you're in there...
I wouldn't take too many chances with oil or fuel in that engine compartment. It gets plenty hot in there to start a fire.... and if you look through the salvage yard pics.... the most common sighting of a NH loader will be with a fried engine compartment.
Clean it out.

Rod

Interesting thing about hydaulics, they can do a lot of damage with very little effort. I've seen this happen just once. An amount of water accumulated in the hydraulic system of a loader and the oil filter started blowing oil from around the O-ring shortly after start up. We spun a new filter on and everything was fine. I was accused of not putting the filter on tight enough when I serviced this a few months earlier. Later on when we were done I cut the bad filter open and found alot of water froze up inside and pressure had apparently "bowed" the base of the filter until the O-ring leaked. We pulled the loader in the garage overnight and drained all the hydraulics and refilled with new oil.
At this point I'd be more concerned about getting the problem solved than cleaning up the mess.

Pressure wash it out or us a steam cleaner. You could spray it down with brakleen and blow it dry with an air hose

The engine seemed to be fine. Has anybody else had a dydraulic filter come lose like this. Could vibrations etc.. make that happen? I plan on mopping up as much of the oil as I can and then I will pressure wash in the spring as it is below freezing here. Has anybody ever used brakleen for an application like this??? Would I be able to spray it clean with air?

My Hyd. filter came loose after I had a wheel motor replaced. They put a new filter on and it didn't leak right away but after about 15 or so hours, it blew the O-ring out of the groove. The O-ring wasn't damaged, so I put it back in the groove and tightened the filter. The filter bottomed out on the base. It's not leaking but I'm going to put a new filter on in the spring. The OEM filter is made by Donaldson but I'm going to put a Baldwin filter on. It uses a flat O-ring like an engine oil filter and not just a plain round O-ring. The flat ring is also thicker so the filter doesn't bottom out. If you run out of Hyd. oil in a skid steer, shut it off right away! And don't tow it. You will cause serious and expensive damage to the hydrostatic drives. The noise you heard was from the Hyd. pump(s)running out of oil. If you can wash/rinse the engine off should be enough to remove most of the oil. There isn't a big risk of fire from the oil. It will thin out and disappear from the engine heat. Was your filter a Donaldson? You can tell because it will have a cast aluminum head with slotted holes for the oil to go through. Donaldson is OEM for a lot of machines. Maybe their hyd. filters are flawed? Dave

I'd just use some spray on engine cleaner and degreaser like Super clean. It's safe for rubber and plastic and biodegradable. Then just rinse it off with water trying to stay away from electrical connections. Even a bucket of water would be sufficient. Once the filter is fixed and it's filled up with oil, the cooling fan and engine heat will dry it out. When my filter came loose and lost all the oil, I had to take my track loader to pick the wheels off the ground so I could drag it to where I could fix it. If you had leaves and small branches around the engine would be more of a fire hazzard than just the oil. Dave

I'd just crank the thermostats on the water heater for a couple hours and then spray it off with a hose. That should be as good as more if you can get 160-180 degree water...

Rod

If I am remembering right, that is a high pressure filter that costs a lot, like $60 or so.

I have had these on NH loaders where the filter housing threads get damages. The filter housing isn't too expensive or hard to change.

Might want to double check the threads on the housing or you might blow another filter