L6060 Power Steering Issue

[5030]

Is a very interesting subject. Don't take this wrong....

Why would you continue to turn the wheel if you were turning in what was to be the heading you wanted to turn into?

Was it just because you noticed you could? Or because you thought you needed the tractor to turn more?

I am not getting the discovery aspect of this discrepancy.

Neither am I. Do you jam your cars wheels against the steering stops just to see if you can turn it sharper or your truck? I think not so why the tractor?

 

[Fallon]

Neither am I. Do you jam your cars wheels against the steering stops just to see if you can turn it sharper or your truck? I think not so why the tractor?

I end up against the stops a bit when doing tight maneuvers. I don't muscle it into the stops like I did in the video but I keep a bit of pressure on it. I would notice if it kept turning really easy. I'd start poking around & trying a few things if I noticed other wire steering behavior as well. Not entirely unreasonable in my book, especially when troubleshooting.

 

[Hilbilly]

Neither am I. Do you jam your cars wheels against the steering stops just to see if you can turn it sharper or your truck? I think not so why the tractor?

Geez, who said anything about jamming the steering wheel against the stop and then trying to force it to keep turning. If you took the time to read the first post and number 20, you will see that on my tractor I have to keep steering to the left, to keep it in a straight line. To me this is not normal. So I am trying to trouble shoot the issue. In the video I turn the wheel in both directions and you can see that to the right it stops but to the left it continues to turn after hitting the stops. I am NOT forcing the wheel, it turns easily.

When maneuvering in tight places I often turn the wheels until they hit the stops and then back off the pressure until no relief sounds are heard. I do the same on my other vehicles too. I don't force any of them to stay at the stops. But on this tractor when I hit the left stop, the steering wheel continues to EASILY turn. The only reason I am doing this is to determine if there is something wrong.

To clarify;
1) if I want to travel in a straight line I have to keep adjusting the steering wheel to the left. This doesn't seem right to me.
(note; the steering is not jammed against any stops when this occurs.)

 

[5030]

When I'm roading either of my M's (and I do that a lot as my fields aren't contiguous to the main farm), I have to correct for road inclination all the time and always have. I just take it as a quirk with hydrostatic steering and I can put the spindles against either stop and keep turning the wheel if I so desire which I don't because once I get to a steering stop, the resistance increases but can be overcome.

Both my M's are exactly the same and in 6000 hours it's never been an issue with me. In fact, my previous Kubotas were the same as well. If I recollect correctly, I'm on my 12th Kubota now.

 

[Hilbilly]

When I'm roading either of my M's (and I do that a lot as my fields aren't contiguous to the main farm), I have to correct for road inclination all the time and always have. I just take it as a quirk with hydrostatic steering and I can put the spindles against either stop and keep turning the wheel if I so desire which I don't because once I get to a steering stop, the resistance increases but can be overcome.

Both my M's are exactly the same and in 6000 hours it's never been an issue with me. In fact, my previous Kubotas were the same as well. If I recollect correctly, I'm on my 12th Kubota now.

Thanks for the additional information. Just to confirm ..... when you say you have to "correct for road inclination all the time", does that mean you have to always turn the steering wheel to the left as you travel? (assuming that the road has a constant down slope from left to right).

I had to go to the City today for other reasons but stopped by the dealer and talked to the Service Manager. He took me out to one of the other new L6060's he has on the lot and fired it up. I got on it and turned the steering wheel hard right and hard left. The steering wheel stopped at both wheel stops. If I really forced it, I could get the steering wheel to continue to turn and it was slightly easier to force it to the left. This, however is not like what I am experiencing on my tractor. On mine it is very easy to keep turning the wheel to the left. I will get him to assess it when I take the tractor in for the HST recall.

 

[MHarryE]

Here is a thread from a forum where somebody asked same question:

I have a 1989 445C industrial. When traveling on the road, the tractor drifts slowly to the right, requiring an occasional left turn input to drive straight. Otherwise the power steering works well in both directions and with heavy loads in the bucket. I realize that with hydrostatic power steering, the steering wheel is not directly attached to the tie rods.
Is there any cause for concern with this?

Thanks:


Re: Hydrostatic steering drift? in reply to UPFord, 03-25-2017 14:33:28
Sounds like every hydrostatic steer tractor I've driven. Some are worse than others.

My experience - we bought our first tractor with hydrostatic power steering in 1963, a International 806. It drifted. After graduating with Mechanical Engineering degree, I worked for Allis-Chalmers, Case International, and Caterpillar, from engineer to engineering manager. The only machine without hydrostatic steering drift was a special one with separate front and rear steering. It could not tolerate any drift. I needed the supplier to design a special control unit with zero leaks checks. Cost was roughly 4 times that of a standard unit.

Through the hundreds of machines from those 3 manufacturers I’ve driven, some have almost zero drift while others are noticeable enough for a person to demand changing it out. Remember now, I was working for companies and changing a unit out, especially a test unit I would be operating, was less expensive than downtime to tweak a unit. It would be swap out and return to supplier for analysis. I’ve been retired 12 years and I cannot recall failure analysis or how many steering wheel turns per mile to compensate drift were considered excessive. That is how I recall measuring drift - turns per unit distance traveled. Especially easy to track if you have a spinner on your steering wheel.

 

[Hilbilly]

Here is a thread from a forum where somebody asked same question:

I have a 1989 445C industrial. When traveling on the road, the tractor drifts slowly to the right, requiring an occasional left turn input to drive straight. Otherwise the power steering works well in both directions and with heavy loads in the bucket. I realize that with hydrostatic power steering, the steering wheel is not directly attached to the tie rods.
Is there any cause for concern with this?

Thanks:


Re: Hydrostatic steering drift? in reply to UPFord, 03-25-2017 14:33:28
Sounds like every hydrostatic steer tractor I've driven. Some are worse than others.

My experience - we bought our first tractor with hydrostatic power steering in 1963, a International 806. It drifted. After graduating with Mechanical Engineering degree, I worked for Allis-Chalmers, Case International, and Caterpillar, from engineer to engineering manager. The only machine without hydrostatic steering drift was a special one with separate front and rear steering. It could not tolerate any drift. I needed the supplier to design a special control unit with zero leaks checks. Cost was roughly 4 times that of a standard unit.

Through the hundreds of machines from those 3 manufacturers I’ve driven, some have almost zero drift while others are noticeable enough for a person to demand changing it out. Remember now, I was working for companies and changing a unit out, especially a test unit I would be operating, was less expensive than downtime to tweak a unit. It would be swap out and return to supplier for analysis. I’ve been retired 12 years and I cannot recall failure analysis or how many steering wheel turns per mile to compensate drift were considered excessive. That is how I recall measuring drift - turns per unit distance traveled. Especially easy to track if you have a spinner on your steering wheel.

Thanks MHarryE.

Based on all that has been said on this thread, it appears this is normal, although mine might be on the high end of the normal drift spectrum. My previous 2008 Massey 1547 didn't do this but I don't know if it had HST steering. I'll see what the dealer says when I take the tractor in for the HST split. At this point it is at least comforting to know drift is normal for this tractor. It would be even more useful to know how much is within tolerances. Like the reference you made to number of turns per mile or something like that. For now I will just continue to use it and monitor the drift to see if it changes. Seems like it might be, since I have never noticed until recently. I now have 250 hrs on the tractor ( in 10 months ). On my Massey I only had 850 hrs after 10 years.

 

[MHarryE]

Having lived with hydrostatic steering on so many machines over 55+ years, I don’t really notice the drift that much, but now you sensitized me to it. I was tilling today, about 1/4 mile along the edge abutting lawn. I was continually needed to slowly steer left to go straight. If it wasn’t mu thinking of this as the norm, I would be asking my dealer about it. Now I wish the WSM had a published limit so I had something to judge by.