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I did get the steering clutches working so even though that was a while ago I thought I would post what I found in case someone else has the same problem. I took the pump off and took it to a hydraulic shop. They said the housing was worn and was allowing the oil to bypass, basically it was wore out and no longer working. They could not fix it or get parts since it was exclusively Cat. I went to the local Cat dealer but was told the pump was discontinued. I talked to another person at the Cat dealer who said they could still get the housing and the gears, just not the whole pump. The housing was about $250 and the gears about the same. I tried getting a used pump and searching the Internet I found several but they were $300 or better. I decided to go with the new housing since the Hydraulic shop had said it was usually the housing, not the gears that would wear. After I put the gears in the new housing I could not get the pump to work. I tried priming the line going from the strainer to the pump to see if it would suck the oil and it did. I put the pump back on and it worked this time. I had this problem once before when I drained the oil out of the bevel housing and the transmission. While the oil was out I started the engine to raise the bucket, thinking it wouldn’t hurt anything since I wasn’t going to move the machine. After putting the oil back in I didn’t have steering clutches and went through the whole procedure of priming the line and it started working. It seems the pump needs to be primed if it is run dry. Just changing the oil does not create a problem as long as you still have oil in the line and pump. I didn’t do this myself but one of the mechanics at Cat said you should put a hydraulic gauge on the pump to see what the pressure is. I am still not real happy with the steering clutches but am going to adjust them when I get the machine back in the shop. I have went through the regular adjustment with the brakes but am wondering if some of the other adjustments might be off, linkages, etc. If I had it to do over again I think I would have gone ahead and put the gears in also. One thing to do (which I didn’t) is order the pins that line up the housing, the old ones came off hard.
Gary
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