2388 stiff steering

[superih]

2005 2388, steers stiff even when oil is warm, it will intermittently steer nice and easy but most of the time acts as if its running out of oil or pressure, wanders bad when steering down the road in road gear.

I'm guessing hand pump is bad where do I start?  

Get pressure and flow readings at the steering hand pump?  What should they be?

Is there a pressure regulator that I can pull to see if weak or plugged?

Any thing else to check?

[SDman]

Let's try something simple/cheap while sitting in the seat of the combine.

Raise the feeder all the way up...and hold the raise button after the feeder comes to its upper limit so that you can hear the hydraulic pump on demand. Now try your steering. Good or not?

[ksfarmdude]

make sure your steering spindles are well greased and not bound up

[Qc.Can.IH man]

 How cold is the outside temperature? I know on my 1460 during the cold weather the steering is harder. There’s a lot of distance between the steering wheel and steering cylinder, the oil never really warms up.

 About 10 years ago I was combining corn and the windchill was probably in the -30° to-40°C range, that sure made for stiff steering! 

[superih]

It has steered hard since I bought it, spindles are free and greased, at first I thought it was the rear weight kit but it never did steer normal so i'm pretty sure something needs attention.

SDman, I appreciate your reply and will try that and report back.

[SDman]

OK, I saw the pictures of your machine on the Axial-Flow timeline post....and some memories come back in regards to Axial-Flows in the time frame that that one was built.

First off, how many steering cylinders does your machine have? One or two? Looks like yours has a MudHog to make matters worse in this regard.

When 12-row ready 2388s came out in 2001, they originally came only with a MudHog and a full rack of weights as they were trying to get as much counterweight in the tail to counteract the heavy 12-row head out front. This, in turn, made the back of the combine awful tail heavy when there was no head attached and you were going down the road...and hard to control. Later on, there was an option to install a second steering cylinder for better steering performance in these conditions. Now I think the second steering cylinder was always an option...don't recall that it was ever standard on any machine, even a 12-row ready machine. Anyway, yours might need a second steering cylinder, and I would advise getting the other steering hand pump that came with the second steering cylinder option. Now CaseIH does say you can just use the original hand pump, but you will have to make twice as many turns of the steering wheel since you need to supply twice as much oil due to the second cylinder.

[superih]

It has one cylinder, the true 12 row ready machines came with two cylinders, mine is not one of them.  It still steers hard with the head on, much worse than the two other 2388's in the neighborhood,  I'll do your test and get back with results.

[superih]

I did your test with the machine sitting in the barn, probably 25 degrees in there, noticed no difference when trying to move the steering with the feeder up button being pushed, I could hear the pump under a load while holding the button down. 

 Can you please explain what this is doing to the hydraulic system and what you were looking for?

[SDman]

Superih, I had you do that for a couple reasons. First, the raising the feeder puts the PFC pump at its highest working pressure. Since you say the feeder raises fine, we can pretty much assume the pump itself is ok.  By putting the pump on high pressure, we should be able to develop adequate pressure for steering. And also, by activating two functions at once we can also rule out signal check problems in another valve. 

Since you are still having problems with steering, I would suggest you get access to a 3-5000 psi pressure gauge. If you look right above the door you remove to get to the concaves, you will see a test port on the steering priority valve. Put that gauge on that test port, start up the machine and steer it as hard as you can. You should develop 2350-2500 psi at the gauge when you steer as hard as you can. If the pressure is low, you need to remove the hand pump from the combine to adjust the relief. The adjustment screw is on the top side of the hand pump. If it’s never been adjusted before, the screw will be covered by a waxy substance that you have to melt away to get to the screw. 

[superih]

Perfect, interesting that the pressure is adjustable in the hand pump. 

Yes feeder raises fine, with 30ft head on, have the lift speed only turned up about 40% and it was plenty fast.  I will test pressure at this port, won't be until after Christmas, thanks again

[Dillsburg 560D]

It could be the steering cylinder itself leaking internally. I had a 2366 that presented the same problems a few years ago. Repacked the steering cylinder and problem was gone. Good luck with your steering problem and please keep us updated.