Back in 2001 or so, not long after moving into the place where Danielle and I currently live, I laid my new KitchenAid stand mixer on its side on the floor, and when picking it up I’d found that a bunch of oil had spilled out of the side. This both surprised me and was a pain to clean up, so ever since then I made a point of keeping it upright, with the top in the normal, neutral, ready-to-mix position.
Being careful with it worked fine and the problem was mostly forgotten about until earlier this year when I found more oil leaking out after Danielle had left the head tipped up. It had also begun making some awkward squeaking noises when shutting off, so I knew it was in need of some work. This evening I finally got around to taking it apart.
A YouTube video from eReplacementParts.com got me started, and it wasn’t long before I had the mixer apart and was able to see the problem: there was both grease and oil in the gearbox, and when tipped or tilted from something other than its normal position this oil would slowly leak out. I strongly suspect that my mixer was lubricated with either the beginning or end of a new pack/tube of grease, which could have a goodly layer of oil on it. Or, maybe the grease separated over time. (I suspect the former because of how long ago the original leak occurred…)
I scraped out most of the grease, wiped out the oil, and then cleaned off the seal and put everything back together, putting the grease back inside of the housing and all over the gears so it could do its job.
From what I’m reading on other sites this is not an uncommon problem, and it seems like many KitchenAid mixers eventually need their grease replaced. So much so that the KitchenAid-branded grease is even available on Amazon. I suspect that I’ll be taking this back apart some time in the future to regrease it, but for now at least I’ve been able to stop the dripping oil.
(One strange issue that I ran into with the grease is that it would not clean up using ProGold Pro Towels, but a bit of alcohol worked very nicely.)