500 Hour Service Interval Guide for a John Deere 650K Dozer – Part 1

In this 6-part service guide for the John Deere 650K dozer, we’ll mainly focus on tasks for the 500 hour interval but also service other components like the final drive and hydraulic oil filters.

Part one will cover changing this equipment’s engine oil and filter.

On the Tekamo HD YouTube channel, you can watch Keith, an expert heavy-duty technician performing the service.

To drain the engine oil from the 650K, you’ll need an Allen key to open a valve. Besides the valve, there’s a hose that you can route to a catch pan.

The belly pan covering the drain valve is towards the front of the machine. The John Deere 650K we serviced had a blade attached, so we needed to raise it to make room to reach the belly pan. We put some lock blocks underneath to prevent the blade from accidentally coming down.

You’ll need a 16 mm socket to remove the four bolts of the belly pan.

Unlike the Cat 314T, which has two slotted holes, the bolt holes of the 650K belly pan are rounded, so you must hold it as you take it off. Sometimes, mud or dirt will build up, which will be pretty heavy.

The engine oil filter is behind the front right-side door. However, the blade was in the way, and the filter is hard to reach on this equipment. So Keith, the heavy-duty technician who serviced the dozer, recommends removing the two panels around the door.

Remove the top panel first because the lower panel goes up and behind the upper one. The lower panel has a hard-to-reach bolt behind the blade. Remove all the 16 mm bolts except the one hard-to-reach. Just break it loose with a wrench or breaker bar and tilt the panel out of the way.

Depending on your machine design, you can choose filter pliers, channellock pliers (pump pliers), or a strap wrench to loose the oil filter. Turn the filter clockwise to break it loose.

Since the person who previously installed the filter made it very tight (he probably used a tool to do it), we crushed it while trying to crack it loose. Don’t use tools to tighten spin-on filters to avoid this from happening to you, as we frequently recommend in our articles.

After pulling off the oil filter, make sure to change the seal that sits at the top of the housing.

Before installing the new filter, apply a thin oil film to the seal so it slides against the housing rather than binding and twisting, and thread it back on hand-tight.

What about priming the filter? We didn’t do it. Some people say it protects the engine. Others claim they have never had problems installing the filter without pre-filling it. Our article “1,000 Hour Service Interval Guide for a Komatsu PC200LC Excavator – Part 1” delves deeper into this topic.

Once the engine oil drains, close the drain valve, put the hose back up inside, and reinstall the belly pan.

As mentioned at the beginning of this post, the John Deere 650K belly pan has round holes, so you’ll have to hold it while reinstalling the bolts. Some equipment, like the Cat 314E excavator, feature slotted holes, so you can leave some bolts loose and slide the belly pan off and on instead of holding it.

The John Deere 650 K’s engine oil capacity (including the filter) is 5 gallons (19 liters).

We used a 20-liter bucket of Tekamo branded 15w40 CK-4 oil. Should you also use a bucket, wipe the top to prevent dirt from getting inside the engine system, and, if equipped with a vent, open it to pour the oil in a steady stream rather than having a glugging effect.

When taking the read on the dipstick, take it out, wipe it off (so you don’t get a false reading), and put it back again. Aim for the full mark on the dipstick.

Part 2 of this series will show you how to change the fuel filters on the John Deere 650K dozer.