MF135 Steering "Mess"

I know I wrote a wall of text below, but please help me confirm my plan of action from here. I don't want to make this worse.

If you read my thread from last week I put a new ps pump on my 135 and it made the wheels lock up, per you guys indicating the control valve. Drained the fluid and filled/tried again. Then the wheels move while in the air but very hard to steer once on ground while moving and it was blowing fluid out the pressure relief on the pump.

Monday night I figured I would just drain the system and go manual steering. When I opened the fill plug on the pump it was over full, which I'm not sure how that could even happen unless it drained out of the cylinder/lines and filled the pump.

At the same time I noticed the top of my gear box was "blown up". After a tear down the last couple nights here's what I can see. The gear box cover was heaved up and the top of the gear box where the pressure relief is was blown out. The piece was still there but with just 2 fingers I was able to pull it off completely. After pulling the cover off, the guide/pad on the underside of the cover was partially broken, about the last 1/4. Both the broken pad and gearbox appeared they could have already been existing breaks (or at least fractured) originally as they were not shiny metal but are dark. When turning the wheel with the wheels in the air the rack/rod connected to the ps cylinder moves straight up in the air (hence the hard steering) in the exact way that shows the heave in the cover. At the same time we noticed that the previous owner filled the box with hard grease. I also put 90W in last week. The relief on top of the gear box was packed with hard grease so I assume it was not functional.

What do you guys think happened here? Why did the ps cylinder rod/rack go upwards and heave/bust the cover rather than slide along the guide? We thought maybe because the last 1/4 of the guide was broke off but the break looks old so it was like that before the new pump. I don't think it could be pressure because that steering box doesn't hold pressure, correct? Heck even when I was filling with 90W it came out the shims under the cover when I got to that point so the box was not pressurized.

Since I don't think I need to maintain pressure in the box, I'm going to remove the ps cylinder, plate that opening, put a new plate on top of the box and jb weld the busted out piece back in. Do you think that would work? As long as I take out the ps rod/rack and the steering works I just need to seal the box?

ptfarmer ..... you said you completely removed the power steering from one of your tractors. Did you completely remove all power steering components (pump, lines, cylinder) and put a piece of plate steel over the openings (ps pump gear, ps cylinder) with a gasket?

The fluid shouldn't have went back into the pump from the lines, and cylinder.

The top of the steering box being heaved up is usually from over pressure in the cylinder, the cylinder, or piston in it is probably damaged in some way. The grease where the sector gears, and the vent are shouldn't have effect the hydraulic system as it is separate from the hydraulic system.

The rack for the power steering used the angle of the gears as a ramp causing the rack to go upwards (the rack tried to jump over the teeth of the sector gears).

You do not need to maintain any pressure in the steering box so putting a plate over where the cylinder bolted up, and remove the rod, and rack that was attached to the cylinder. The JB weld on top should be ok, there won't be anything pushing up against it after the rack is removed, it just needs to be able to keep dust, and water out of the box.

I removed all the components of the power steering (pump, lines, cylinder) I did leave the control valve that's on the steering column in place. I capped off the openings on the control valve to keep any stuff from getting in there. I did use a nice flat steel plate with a gasket, and gasket sealer to cover where the pump, and cylinder were.

Sounds like you are on the right track.

I'm not sure how the ps pump got overfilled when I filled from the level indicator fill hole and it wasn't coming out when I put the plug back in. That's strange. At any rate that's probably what caused this.

Well I did get everything back together last evening and I did remove all ps components at least for the time being. Plated and sealed all openings.

Wow is thing a bear to steer with a loader on the front and no power assist. That power assist did a lot more than I thought. The steering itself seems to be very smooth now so I don't think there is anything wrong with it at this point. Maybe I'll get energetic one of these days and add full ps to it.