Hydraulics and grease on old implements

Hey, I had a few questions about working with older implements. I was hoping someone here might be able to offer me some insight. I have an old haybine that came with the farm. It clearly hasn't been used in a while and is in somewhat rough shape. However, everything that's supposed to move appears to move, and I'd like to try hooking it up to my tractor at some point to see how it does. This leads me to my two questions.

1) Is it a bad idea to hook up an older implement's hydraulics to my tractor? I have no idea about the condition of the hydraulic fluid in the haybine and don't want to contaminate my tractor.

2) I'd like to grease all the grease points on the haybine before hooking it up to power or really moving the mechanical parts a lot. Again, I have no idea how old the grease in there is. Is it sufficient to just add new grease until the new stuff comes out, or do I need to do something more involved first?

Thanks in advance.

1) you are right to be concerned, chances are good there will be decomposed rubber in the oil plus who knows what grade of oil it was or how badly it has decayed.  Not worth the risk to a modern tractor.  You can pull the fittings and drain some of the oil into a clean container to inspect it for visible decay, but that still won't tell you if it's chemically compatible with your tractors oil. It is a bit of work to cycle all the cylinders and change out the fluid, but worth it.

2) basically, yeah.  Find a manual to make sure you get ALL the grease fittings, some are REALLY hidden.

^^yup, this^^

R Scott wrote:1) you are right to be concerned, chances are good there will be decomposed rubber in the oil plus who knows what grade of oil it was or how badly it has decayed.  Not worth the risk to a modern tractor.  You can pull the fittings and drain some of the oil into a clean container to inspect it for visible decay, but that still won't tell you if it's chemically compatible with your tractors oil. It is a bit of work to cycle all the cylinders and change out the fluid, but worth it.

2) basically, yeah.  Find a manual to make sure you get ALL the grease fittings, some are REALLY hidden.

Thanks! Glad to know I was on the right track.