WOW! Lost steering on my 400.

Sure am glad I was baling hay and not road tripping in 5th gear when the steering gave way.
My 400 has after market power steering.
I made a corner just fine straitened it out and now I can just turn the wheel in complete circles with no input going to the front end at all.
I havent got under the hood yet. I just unhooked her from the baler and drove back to the house in Reverse, steering with the brakes. ( You can do that!) Grabbed the 460 and finnished baling.
Any one have any ideas about this sort of thing??
Oh here I found a photo of the steering motor when I did the split.

It looks like there is no roll pin holding the yoke on. It just looks like the yoke just came loose of the shaft. (which out of 3 power steering units that I worked on that were on 400 and 450, only one had a roll pin to keep the shaft from coming off) There is a collar on the steering shaft just behind the support of the steering shaft just in front of the steering wheel. This keeps the shaft from moving back away from the unit. I'm guessing that the collar was loose and let the yoke work off the power steering unit.

John In Iowa

I replaced the single roll pin with a dual concentric roll pin (a smaller diameter pin inside a larger pin) then ran a safety wire thru the inner pin to keep it in place. Also I now give the whole steering shaft assembly (U-joint clamp, motor, coupling and roll pins) a thorough inspection every spring.

I had lost the key where the power steering unit hooked up to the shaft (exactly where you split yours). Never could get the coupler to "clamp down" on the Charlynn PS shaft the way it should, everything would seem tight but you could give the sterring wheel a good tug and it would pull apart at the clamp. Finally drilled a small hole through the coupler and PS shaft and ran a small bolt through it. That was about 5 years ago.

Yes you have the Char-Lynn motor pictured. I would guess that either the roll pin came out of the coupler(in front of the motor) or the splines wore completely out in side the coupler. Both cases are normal. As far as internal motor problems I can only think of one case where the centering springs(found on the spool,a total of six i believe)broke off which caused a freewheeling symptom. If you do take your motor apart be sure to keep the end caps marked with a center punch for proper alignment in reassembly. Also if you put the notched shaft(internal) in to the cam wrong it will make the motor in to an orbital pump. Big difference. The tolerance between the cams should be under .005" . anything more is getting wore out.