Mick, how did you go about trying to lift the front? If you had the bucket flat and tried to use the lift arms only, you might not get the front into the air. You either have to put the bucket flat on the ground and then curl it to the dump position or put it in the dump position and the lower the lift arms. If that is what you did, then you might have weak hydraulics and you probably need to invest in a 3000 psi gage hooked to a quick-connect adapter so you can put it into the loader hydraulics and measure the pressure. If your loader won't lift, you need to identify whether the problem is the pressure or maybe an internal cylinder leak. The pressure gage will really help with that. Also, if you lift your loader with the bucket flat and then turn off the engine, does the bucket sag? Arms drop? Either of these could mean you still have an internally leaking cylinder or your joystick valve is bypassing. When you center your joystick, you remove the pressure relief valve from the circuit, so any leak-down is probably internal cylinder leakage.