IH 444 might a hydraulic pump quit?

Wifes cousins tractor again...I'm trying to fix several issues at once and this is the one that caused that decision to be made! (to try to fix several)

Symptom: He was cutting on mild slope couple weeks ago and steering quit (power). He shut down. 2 weeks ago we fired it up and everything worked FINE. We concluded he simply starved the pump on the hill and he was low on fluid.

He filled with hydraulic fluid and I commenced to cut one of the fields. About halfway through the field the steering became "weird". It was basically not responding as quickly as normal..as though it took another turn or so of the steering wheel to complete the turn of the front wheels. Shortly thereafter, the steering quit all together and as I went over the field to the side, the front wheels simply wobbled to the left or right, depending on the terrain. I finally ended up using the turning brakes to help guide the tractor to where I wanted it.

Parked it, fixed the PTO gasket leak, checked the hydraulic fluid and ...uhoh... it's still FULL.

Now.. (drats), as I'm typing this, I'm thinking...I SHOULD do two things... first, check the steering again which I presume won't work, but I should ALSO check the PTO.

I'd surmise if the PTO works fine then the hydraulic pump is fine and something else is killing the steering...if however, I don't have either, then what?

My first presumption is the pump might be bad. It's the original pump on this 30 year old tractor.

If I need to remove the pump, according to the diagrams I see on the caseih.com site, it appears as though this might be gear driven? I might just unbolt the attachments and unbolt it from the flange to remove it from the tractor??

Any "dangers" I should be concerned about if I intend on removing the hydraulic pump?

btw, wifes cousin said he recently checked for blockage in the hydraulic sump and there is supposedly no protection screen...so it was clear. I'm still a bit nervous about the accuracy of that statement.

HA... been looking at IH's site and diagrams...there IS a filter in the hydraulic fluid... gonna have to check that.

As a backup plan, my questions about 'dangers' of removing hydraulic pump are still here.... are there any or is it similar to removing a fuel pump?

PTO on a 444 has nothing to do with the hydraulic pump. It has a two clutches in it. One for the tractor and one for the PTO.

Hi, I see you have discovered the filter on the return line of the hydraulic pump. If you park the tractor on a slope with front wheels up and rear down you can remove the hydraulic filter without loosing much hydraulic oil. Is it a gas or Diesel engine. On the 444 I believe there is a priority valve that diverts about 3 GPM to PS and rest goes to 3PT hitch. Does 3PT stop working as well? The older 434 had 2 hydraulic pumps stacked one behind the other. One did PSthe other did 3PT.

JimB

No dangers, the pump unbolts from the motor and the oil manifold. and pulls out. But first I would check a few things. The big tube on the suction side of the pump has a screen. The screen is located under the seat in front on the left hand side. The hyd filter was an option on the 444 and is located under the fuel tank in the steering wheel area. Also the 444 has two options for hydraulic oil. The plug in the right rear corner of the lift cover fills up some tractors that have a separate system. The other versions take theirs from the rear end by way of a tube.

Any chance this might be a suction tube problem? I helped my father-in-law replace one on a 340 that had small holes rusted through it and it was sucking air. Just for clearity, it was the tube that goes from the rear end to the hydraulic filter.

After looking at the diagrams and remember what I saw yesterday...here's another question...

I think the supply tube (suction) goes directly from the resivoir to the pump and there is no inline filter other than the filter on the end.

Does anyone know if these are cleaned & reinstalled or are they replaced?

Given how old and dirty this tractor is, I'm hoping the filter is simply filled with a bunch of gunk. If it's cleaned & reinstalled, I might have it running tomorrow, if it needs to be replaced (which I doubt has EVER happened) I'll need to order one first since that would be a good thing to do, regardless of anything else.

?

Hi, we used to clean the filter on our B414, 434 and 384.

JimB

WARNING; my experience is with a 3444 tractor-backhoe-loader. So it's similar but different. On that application a diverter valve switched the flow from the engine mounted power steering pump to the backhoe valve for swinging and additional speed on the other functions. We replaced that pump twice. The pump body cracked both times. Never did find a problem. The pump was easy to change. The most important thing I learned was that we could buy it aftermarket for a fraction of the OEM price.

Thought I'd bring some closure...

Went out to tractor today. Bucket in hand, I was going to siphon most of the hydraulic fluid out and pull the filter.

Prior to doing so, I thought...let's start it, see if steering works and 3-point lifts... or one over the other. (the steering had quit the other day)

fired machine up, steering worked FINE, 3-point worked fine also. Figured I'd cut some of the field where I stopped the other day to see how long it took to quit on me...

Finished entire field as well as a couple other places.

Bottom line, I'm now 100% convinced the pump itself is fine and any issues I might have, are probalby related to blockage.

Here's their schematic... can anyone tell me how to properly remove part #3? Does it simply PULL out? is it threaded?