JD M and MT steering

Have a JD M with pin in steering box which is wore out, As I understand the MT has two pins which contact the sector gear. I plan on leaving this tractor too my five year old grandson. I most likely will nor be around when he used this tractor. I wish to leave the steering as good as possible. What I would like to do in put a two pin shaft from a standard MT in the M. This would require serious machining of lower potion of shaft which is no problem. I cannot seem to find parts book information to decide if the two pin JD MT top would work same as the one pin M. Anybody have any information on this idea??

Believe Steiner now has the pins and its not a big deal

Actually the early models had only one finger pin if I remember correctly

Thanks for your response I did get a new pin from Steiner. However the plate for the pin is wore from operating with a loose pin.

I have thought of that modification myself but haven't been able to find a top arm to play with & the entire box is way to expensive for an experiment that I don't think will work out well enough to suit me. I'm sure it will work but the turning radius will be affected greatly. With a standard M box you are going to lose about an inch of worm gear travel. If you examine your box you'll see evidence of the arm hitting the heavy boss at each end of it's travel now. Take away that much travel and I'm afraid it will take a forty acre field to turn around in. I'd still like to know so if you can find an arm you can satisfy both our curiosity.

Since you indicate machining isn't a problem fixing your's shoulden't be an issue. If your arm is egged out bore the hole a tad bigger and turn a new pin to accommodate it. There used to be a guy that made oversized pins bottom, top, or both but I haven't heard from him in years.

To keep it from wearing out again you need to change the vertical shaft bushings and the most important one (which no one thinks of) is at the very bottom. Fill it with cornhead grease or go to your local mower shop and get a bottle of Snapper 00 ep grease. It will last another 60 years.