Hydaulics Stuck....

Just wondering if any of you kind knowledgeable gentlemen would mind educating me a bit on my next project?

This 1972 Allis Chalmers 185 belonged to my father. It hadn't been run in several years until last year and though Pop was very good at taking care of his equipment in his last few years he suffered from dizziness and it just kinda took the will out of him when it came to such things.

But anyway....last year I started using the tractor to garden and when I first got it back running the three point hitch would raise when the tractor was started and would not go back down even with a load on it.

Well an old friend that knows a good bit about tractors was by one day he said that I had to take a punch and run them in the little access holes and free up these spring loaded rods in this valve body. Well I tried it and the only one that would move was the one on the far right....but low and behold it fixed the problem.

Well everything worked great until a couple of months ago...I hopped on fired it up and noticed the hitch raising up....which wasn't really a problem because there was nothing on it and I can normally throw the lever and lower them by hand when changing attachments....well this time I couldn't.

So after trying the trick again to no avail I took the little covers off to find that the plunger rods had pretty much corroded to the point that they where stuck in the sleeves that space them away from the valve body.

Well my question is....if I remove the rods from the valve body will I be able to get them back in? Or is there all manner of rings, springs, seals, check balls and all that kinda crap gonna come flying out with it?

I have a little experience with that kinda thing!....lol

But having said that....I am a Machinist and I am reasonably confident that I can either recondition or remake any steel parts needed....but I just wanted to ask if anyone had any experience or advice they could give about this issue?

This old tractor is part of the family....it's been around since I was three! So any help given would be much appreciated!....thanks!

Working the memory here................ as I recall, the spools are machine fit inside the valve body. The balls, etc. are all in the back end there in the external detent parts. The one that's probably giving you troubles is the traction booster valve. That's the little one to the far right. The big three you have loose are the three point lift/lower, and the two remotes. The little one to the far right will have a bunch of linkage coming up to it from the torsion bar down low where the three point arms pull from. That all is prone to rusting up, as well as the spool itself. You most likely could adjust away, or remove that linkage, and get that little spool back where it belongs. I think that would be forward, as I believe the linkage is not fastened to it, but just pushes in on the front of the spool.

I admire your determination to fix the problem. Now, put it back together as quickly as possible and hope you don't have any LEAKS !!! Your hitch raising on its own has nothing to do with any of the spring loaded spools you have disassembled !! The short cover to the immediate right of the right disassembled spool needs to be removed and take a hammer and punch and drive it FORWARD as far as possible. If you go around to the front side of this spool, you will see a "finger" up against it. Somewhere in the linkage to the finger, something is rusted and stuck. The bolt that the finger pivots on is a likely suspect, and I always remove the nut and using WD40, try to get the head of the bolt free enough to allow the finger to move freely and replace the nut with a locknut and don't tighten it down fully to bind the bolt again. The other linkage is forward of that and sticks on a pivot point. The short story is the finger has to have a gap between it and the spool when both rear hydraulic levers are positioned clear FORWARD. The spool also has to be free enough to be pushed in and spring back out on it's own.

Thank you Sirs! I apologize for my delay in responding...I was expecting email notifications to alert me when someone responded but apparently I don't have that set up correctly.

But thank you both for the detailed responses!

If that is what the issue is then I think that I can get her buttoned back up successfully.

One last thing....the two rods on the left do seem to be frozen in place....the levers are actually pretty well bent from either me or my brothers trying to throw the levers without the valves moving. But
since I have them torn apart should I try to free them up before putting it all back together?

Thanks again....both of you guys seem to be very knowledgeable!

PS....lol....now that I am replying I see the email notification check box....

Thanks for the reply Bob! I sent a thank you to both you and the good Doctor on his thread.

But I hope to have a chance to work on this around the middle of next week so I will let you guys know how it goes.

Thanks again!

The control handles can be heated and freed up. If it's the valve spools that are stuck, soaking, and tapping back and forth should loosen them. But if they're rusted enough to be stuck, the rust might well take out the o-ring sealing them.