1968 John Deere 544 Steering issues

[James Marks]

Long story short I bught and sold and re-aquired my old JD 544 wheel loader. Transmission was loosing oil pressure so tore it down and rebuilt it with the help of the manual. Thing is, it was just the brake interconnect valve not release cutoff oil pressure to the trans.
After the rebuild, the steering now doesnt operate as it should. The tractor starts fine but when I turn the steering whee slightly, the tractor will articulate in the opposite direction and the steering wheel turns against what ever forces you put into it until it slams the steering completely left or right.
I have gone through usual suspects, steering cylinder leaks, valve leaks etc. The only thing the manual doesn't have is the hydraulic diagram of where the 3 hydraulics lines from the steering cylinders are supposed to connect on the steering column. Would anyone having this same or similar tractor be able to take a look and tell me where the steering cylinder hydraulic lines are supposed to be routed. I think I inverted them during the transmission rebuild.
3 goes to back of left cylinder (single acting)
1 goes to back of right cylinder
2 goes to front of right cylinder
Any help is greatly appreciated, been working on this on-off for nearly 6 months!
The manual has a wealth of pressures points, wear limits etc it really is well written but just doesn't have the last bit of info I need.

 

[mg2361]

Welcome to HEF James!

Since it steered fine before disassembly it is reasonable to assume that the hoses were installed incorrectly.

Unfortunately JD does not have a good component location diagram for those older tractors, so you are just going to have to experiment by swapping hoses around, unless there is another 544 owner out there that can compare and inform.

 

[James Marks]

Thanks for the reply mg2361.
Does anyone know of an old time mechanic?Tried flipping hoses around to no avail. There are only so many possibilities because the hoses havemale female compression fittings and are not the right length to interchange. I took out the double cylinder and put compressed air into it to see if it was leaking passed the internal seal. It didn't leak air, but maybe you need higher pressure for it to leak? Looks like I will be taking the steering column off to try reverse engineering it. I called John Doe dealership and they told me to buy a new tractor...

 

[heymccall]

Could you have reversed the hoses at the pump?

 

[mg2361]

Does anyone know of an old time mechanic?

Hey, I resemble that remark!

Do the brakes work? Did you by chance check the standby pressure at the steering pump?