Plumbing seemed like it would be the easy part of the job, but the parker store works on bankers hours, so it was one trip saturday, realize I got mostly wrong stuff (completely my fault for going there without a strong knowledge of hydraulic fittings,) return that monday, get the right parts, give them a small fortune and my left kidney, plumb some, realize I don't have everything, get more stuff tuesday to finish. So after taking the kids trick or treating last night I figured I would try to finish up plumbing. Its not my cleanest plumbing job, but it is what it is. I put the steering wheel on, installed the battery, topped off the hydraulic fluid, said a little prayer, and fired that mother up.
At first I spun the steering and wheel and nothing happened. Thats not very comforting, but I thought maybe it just needed to purge the air from the lines. I ran the rear hitch up and down to verify that I still had hydraulics. That worked, so I felt better. Back to the steering. I kept going back and forth, and I could feel the steering effort increasing. Assumed that was a good sign i kept going. I see a slight movement from the wheels, then they sprang to life. It must have just taken that long to purge the air from the lines. The only issue, I steer right, the wheels turn left. No big deal, since it is fully hydraulic all I had to do was switch the two hoses that attach to the steering cylinder. Easy peezy. Time for a test drive.
Down the drive way I go. All I can say is the conversion was worth every penny and every minute and every minute I put into it. Before there was at least a quarter turn of free play in the steering, now there is none. Before you had put a ton of effort into the wheel, to the point that I didn't think women, children or the elderly would be able to drive it. That was without the loader on. I think it would have been undriveable with the loader. Now there is very little steering effort required. It feels like a factory hydraulic steering. My only complaint is its a little slow, not bad, just a little. This could be changed by putting a smaller hydraulic cylinder on, but that would decrease the force available and most likely increase the steering effort. The other issue with that is the cylinder already plenty small and I built my axle to fit THIS cylinder. Since it is only probably 10-20% slower than I would call ideal I'm not going to mess with it. Overall I am very happy with how the steering turned out, and if I had it to do over I would definitely do it again. I have a couple slow dripping leaks to fix, and I need to pick up some clips to secure the hoses, and put the hood back on it, but its ready to rock out.
When I bought this thing my goal was to have a working loader tractor for $2000 or less. So far I think i'm about $1500 into it, So I'm feeling pretty good.
Next on the agenda is to use it some and figure out what other repairs need done. As far as mods go, I need to add some lights. Stay tuned and thanks for listening.