2-70 hydraulics loss

I friend was using his 2-70spraying the other day everything working fine, until he went to turn and the steering went stiff. He also lost his remotes and point doesn't work either. I checked the priority valve which moves fine. I put a pressure gauge at the front left plug as the IT manual tells to and at best got maybe 250 psi. Looking in the fill hole I can see oil circulating faster as the engine is revved up and still circulated when trying to move the steering wheel. PTO works fine when hooked to and implement so the long PTO shaft is OK. They replaced the filter previously and we cut it apart. It had a bunch of metal in it. I took the top of the rockshaft and pressurized the ports from the priority valve and the top cover with the controls in to see if we had any internal leaks. None were really found other than normal. The one thing I noticed was air bypassing the relief valve quite easily and then it seemed to seal up and then push air thru the pump inlet when testing with air. The screen behind the relief was torn. The spool in the relief moves freely, but just air pressure will open it quite easily. Does this valve use differential pressure of oil on the spring side to help maintain relief pressure? I noticed some small holes in the spool that makes me wonder this and if they got plugged the relief wouldn't function properly. We took the housing off the rest of the way removed the pump and disassembled it. The aluminum center was all tore up with a ridge. I had aluminum on my fingers from the pump that is only 350 hours old. Did this debris punch out the screen and cause the relief to stay open? I have no other pieces of the that I found. Any help would be appreciated. Sorry for the long post.

Obviously, you need a pump. Did you ever check to see if the three point wasn't coming up too high. If it does it works the pump and overheats it causing an early failure. With the three point up, you should be able to lift it manually about an inch. If not, you need to adjust the small turnbuckle so the three point stops before it gets to the top.

I knew it needed a pump and put one in tonight. I checked the 3 point - it was very close to going too far. I readjusted the link. The main relief spool that I had in question, had a piece of metal in the small hole going to the back side of the spool that created pressure on the rear side of the spool. That pressure is what helps the spool hold the high hydraulic pressure trying to help hold the spool shut. This was the real problem causing less than 100 psi of hydraulic pressure because of that passage in the spool being blocked from pump debris.