EUREKA - I FOUND IT!!! I was going to put the paperwork that came with the original pump away, and order a new pump. Sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees. Staring me right in the face on the drawing was "unloader valve assy". I had never noticed that before, and I was sitting here wondering how it worked. I went down and took it apart, and everything was clean and shiny. Decided to try the splitter again after I re-assembled, and nothing had changed. Setting there pondering where to go next, I remembered a post where someone said the first thing he did if he found a suction strainer/filter was throw it as far as he could. I didn't remember if there was anything like that down in the tank, but decided to pull it apart and look. The tank I used came off an old Clark forklift in a wrecking yard, looked nice and clean when I installed it. Luckily, the suction line is welded into a hand hole held down by 4 nuts. On the end of that pipe was a small filter, encased in a larger tube with the end of the filter capped. From what I could see, it looked clean, but remembering the best advice was to get rid of it, I was able to pry the cap off the little filter. Never did get the filter completly off, but taking the cap off left the entire end off the pipe open, so figured that was good enough. Put it back together, and the extension time which was 35 seconds is now 12. Now the gauges indicates whenever the ram moves.
I really want to thank all you guys here on TBN. It's better than going to school.
