Jerry,
if you want to take the hose off the hydraulic fluid cooler to test if the fluid is being pushed out by the pump, i would believe thats a good way to check if the pump is working or not, but i would not recommend doing that if your not familiar with doing something like that already, because what ever you do please do not loosen a line connection and look for hydraulic fluid to come out as if the line has a leak to tell you there is pump pressure, because the pressure of the fluid inside the line comes out like a jet stream of hydraulic fluid that is so strong, look at it this way, the lines are rated at 4500psi and up, so it cuts like a knife when a hose springs a leak, enough to cut your skin open and even loose an eye so fast, often the shop manuals explain how dangerous a hyd hose leak can be when it cuts the skin open and fluid gets under the skin with how hard it is to get hyd. fluid out from the skin, not too many doctors know how to treat that injury and limbs get too infected….
so please don't be cracking lines loose to check for fluid, and don't poke around lines that don't look safe, even engine off there can be pressure in the line, so you can get very hurt, try to get someone who's done this work before to help you if your not comfortable doing this now that i've warned you…
so that was my safety lesson Jerry, I don't mean to scare you, but you did mention you never worked on the machines before so i felt it was important to remind you about safety issues.
so if you still feel up to taking this on problem then make sure there is enough hyd fluid in the system, if i'm not mistaken there are 3 places to check for hyd fluid.
check the fluid in the rear end, that dip stick should be under the seat, then the storage box on the side, and then the reverser dip stick thats mounted somewhere i think rear of the engine on the left side, i think?
if there is not enough fluid in the system remember how much you put in, anything that 'you do' and 'see' will be necessary to know to help with finding out whats wrong.
you said you got it out of the hole, how did you get it out? pulled it with another vehicle? and i guess you would have mentioned already if you saw fluid on the ground while the hoe sat there.
okay Jerry, let me know what you find if the hyd fluids were not low in all three places to check, and how the fluid smells and looks, are you familiar with that a bad reverser fluid would smell like? etc…
and if you safely check for the hyd pump works, pay attention to how powerful the flow was.
joe
