NEED HELP PLEASE !!!!!!

[48 cub]

I was looking to buy a Cub Cadet 383 Hydrostatic antique lawn tractor off of craigslist and there is a problem with the transmition. There is a leak where the lever goes into the transmition and now it han no oil and wont mowe in gear when running. I need to know what to put in it so that it will move. is it ok to put hydrolic fluid in or is there something else that needs to be put in? If you could please help me, I dont know to much about it. Thanks Ray

[Paul B]

Unless you want to put another transaxle in it, I would not buy it. The transmission is really not a serviceable unit, and I doubt if there are any repair parts available for it, and if there are, you probably don't want to pay for them. If the tractor was driven low on fluid until it would no longer pull itself, more fluid is probably not going to fix it. The fluid in them was IH Hy-Tran.

[48 cub]

he didn't run it till it did that, it sat in his garage and leaked out onto the floor. And could it maby be a seal that dried out, or did something maby come loose???

[Paul B]

It could be a seal or a gasket, but it's hard to know without seeing it. The 383 is a Cadet Lawn Tractor, not a Cub Cadet, which is a Garden Tractor. It has a belt driven hydro transaxle made by Peerless (or maybe Eaton) and is completely different than the shaft driven Sunstrand hydro in a Cub Cadet. The transaxle is basically a throw-a-way and not made to be serviced. If you want to buy the tractor, by all means do so, but you should be prepared to find a working transmission to put in it, because repair parts are going to be rather hard to find.