BX 2200 Steering Piston Help

I'm suffering from the dreaded steering issue where you turn the steering wheel and the front end doesn't respond. Thanks to discussions on identifying the problem here, I'm sure it's an O ring in the steering piston that is allowing fluid to leak past the ring. I have 505 hrs on my tractor and have carried some very heavy loads in my fel. Seems like low hrs for a failure, but that's life.

I bought the repair kit for about $34 and then looked to see what I needed to do to get the pistion off and replace the old rings. Well, I must say I'm a bit intimidated by the engineering. How do you get the steering piston off the wheel rod arms (pls excuse my parts terminology). Do you have to peel away the rubber boot at the end of the piston to access a connecting nut or do you have to go to further down to the wheel hub and remove the arm that adjusts toe in?

Once the piston is off the tractor, what is the procedure for disassembling the piston?

Thanks for any advice!

Unfortunately I can help answer the part about the rod arms because I just broke one the other day on my BX22..

The part with the rubber boot is called the Axial Ball Joint ($39 @ coleman equipment) and screws into the cylinder shaft. Since it is a ball joint, you don't have to remove it from the tie rod end, as one side will should rotate without the other one. You should see a couple flat places on the side of the ball joint for a wrench (big wrench) near the cylinder rod.. Just unscrew it from the rod.

Once the ball joints are removed from both sides of the cylinder rod, you can dissassemble the cylinder.

Now when putting it back together, the delema I'm having is do you put lock-tite on the threads before you screw the ball joint back into the cylinder rod? Mine broke because it came unscrewed to the point where there weren't enough threads left in the rod, so it ripped right out of the rod leaving the threads behind.

It's been a while since I did mine, but I just took the nuts off the tie rod at the steering knuckle and removed the cylinder with all that intact. I think I had to loosen the mounting rings to get to the hose fittings, then took the whole thing to the bench to take them loose at the end of the cylinder like explained in previous post. The hardest part of the job was getting the snap rings out of the end of the cylinder, stiff and slick little suckers.

Skipper, how'd the rebuild go, finished it yet?

Yeah, I'm getting ready to attempt this too, so post up any info....Any special tools needed?

I didn't have to use any special tools, just had to get creative with the vocabulary.

I've been having that problem (wandering steering) for a while now. So it's the piston o-rings that are causing leakage and/or no pressure, or not enough pressure to move the piston and thus turn the wheels. Sounds good to me. Is it better to try to rebuild the piston, or buy a new unit? I assume a new unit is much more costly than a rebuild kit would be.

ragman,

I think once you get it apart, you will find the cylinder bore is pitted.

It may be cheaper to go with a complete new cylinder than to buy the cylinder or attempt to repair yours.

Let us know how things go once you get it torn down.

Good luck!

OK, I just finisheded this job. No, it didn't take a year, but it did take 4 or 5 hours and I only replaced the leaking seal. My steering was only bad w/ a heavy load on the front end so I put it off until now as it is getting progressively worse.

This job is not not for the mechanically challenged or faint of heart and requires a rather nicely stocked tool chest. That's the bad news, the good news is my steering is now as precise as it was 500 hrs ago. I'll let the dealer do it next time. I wonder what they charge.

If you are determined and really good mechanically and want some pointers, pm me and I'll give you my phone number.

Alright, I got the kit, and want to attempt to order the o-ring that leaks to have spares on hand, and let others know what to get rather than buying the whole kit. Which o-ring is it? There appears to be three sizes?????:confused2: