[king1]

the length of the cylinder body is the length of the rod inside, theroretically, so full all the way out is not necessary to determine the length at full stoke. i have never seen a hydaulic cylinder built any other way. this is a puzzler because of the location of the steering stops. with the wheel turned all the way one way or the other, touching off on both inner and outer steering stops is achived with about one to two inches of stroke on the cylinders left. now this is thinking opposite of normal thought. one would think that you would not want the cylinder rods to extend nearly all the way, meaning that the cylinders, are in fact, to short. this theory is somewhat negated by the fact that, as i mentioned, both the inner and outer steering stops are achieved. being to short would cause the cylinders to extend to about 98 to 99% of there maximun stroke allowing those cylinders to be at their weakest point allowing for failure (in this case bending) to happen. cylinder that were longer would not allow for so much of the rod exposed, keeping the rods more ridgid. the problem with this theory is that by putting longer cylinders on the maxiumum steering stops would not be achieved causing the cylinders to bottom out when they were all the way retracted, ruining the seals, and not hitting the steering stops. now the steering stops could be welded or shimmed up to fix this problem. thicker diameter rods would help as well. the exposed rods would not be so flimsy. that being said, there are no thicker or longer rods available for this tractor so that is not possible. anyways we are getting into the engineering aspect of this tractor and that is not going to fix the probelm. well, all i have to say is chew on that for a while and let me know if anyone has any ideas. its a good one and i'm sure one of you has an answer. this has turned into somewhat of a journal for me on this probelm and it has been great! i thank everyone for there help.