4600 steering

[sunfighter]

Ok, so I finally got all the little balls back in the steering and buttoned up the old girl. hooked the bush hog and cut along my road for about 20 minutes and "poof" the side gasket blew. I had cleaned, checked for straight and torqued the bolts to the 40 ft lbs as per the manual. Looking online, I see they now have a steel reinforced side gasket. Would have been nice to include it in the seal kit rather than the plain gasket. Anyway, I took it back apart and after rechecking everything, I re-assembled it using nothing but a thin film of silicone. I have now bush hogged the remaining 12 acres and all seems well. Has anyone else had this issue? And, if so, how long has the side cover held?

 

[Welding man]

There are other Ford techs on here that disagree with me, but I have seen this numerous
times and have went through the same ordeal. The last one was on a 4610 4WD. I disassembled
it and the cylinder was badly scored. I had it bored and releeved and put new seals in it
and it has steered perfectly and not leaked a drop since. Some disagreed and said that the scoring was not the problem.It's Fixed. That is all I can tell you.

 

[Sean in PA]

(quoted from post at 10:33:59 07/11/17) There are other Ford techs on here that disagree with me, but I have seen this numerous
times and have went through the same ordeal. The last one was on a 4610 4WD. I disassembled
it and the cylinder was badly scored. I had it bored and releeved and put new seals in it
and it has steered perfectly and not leaked a drop since. Some disagreed and said that the scoring was not the problem.It's Fixed. That is all I can tell you.

But what does scoring in the cylinder have to do with the leaking? If you are trying to say that the scoring causes excess pressure in the lower end, that can't be as there is full pressure in the lower end when you are steering in one direction and full pressure on the top end when steering in the other direction, and the control valve dumps back to the reservoir when not steering in either direction, so scoring in the cylinder would only cause a little bit of pressure in the bottom end due to leakage past the piston when turning in the direction that puts full pressure at the top end. And leakage past the piston due to the scoring would actually decrease the pressure in the bottom end when turning in the direction that would normally put full pressure in the bottom end, so the net result would be that the bottom end never gets as much pressure as it does when there is no scoring and no internal leaking.

I think that you just put it back together better after the cylinder work was done.

 

[Welding man]

I respectfully disagree, What happens when you blow the packing on a piston in a hydraulic
cylinder? You have equal pressure on both sides, When you turn the steering wheel down you
are exerting more pressure on the piston. I have been into dozens of these sectors over the
years and have never been able to get one to stop blowing the side cover gaskets,when the
cylinder was scored. If your experiences have been different, that is great but it has not
worked for me.

 

[Sean in PA]

If it is scored so bad that you have equal pressure on both sides then turning the wheel so that the piston moves down shouldn't create any additional pressure as the fluid will just flow past the piston and keep the pressure equal, plus it would be so hard to turn the wheel that you would know that you no longer have any power assist long before the seal would give way.

The original post in this thread said nothing about losing the power assist when the leak occurred after only 20 minutes of use. And he reinstalled the side cover with silicone and it was able to continue mowing over 12 acres without another leak, and he didn't bore and sleeve the cylinder.