I ran mine out of oil today. It was real cold this morning (20 F), and about 30 seconds after starting it, massive amounts of oil started pouring out of the left side. I shut it down, and determined it to be in the filter area. I pulled the filter off, and low and behold- I had missed the gasket from the old filter when I last serviced it! I have put a couple of hours on it since the last service, but it held until today. Go figure. I need to be more careful, and look more closely. It didn't hurt anything, other than about $20 worth of synthetic (yes, Bulldog, synthetic) T6 Rotella in the snow.
The gasket on the filter was fine, so I pulled the old gasket off of the block, put the filter back on, and filled it back up with what I had on the shelf-15W-40 Rotella conventional. That is what I usually use, but I had switched to the T6 for added comfort 2 changes ago. What surprised me was that the pour rate of the new oil, which had been sitting in a cold barn all winter, flowed as fast as the synthetic coming out of the engine. The new oil poured very easily. So, while I believe synthetic to be superior, I have no concerns about the dino oil in the pan now.
I did have to do a lot of spit shining to get Nemo cleaned up after that.
All of that to just drive the tractor to the barn and put on a new set of stabilizers.
