1010 steering clutches

[MichaelB]

I've purchased a 1010 crawler w/ 6-way blade and noticed from the beginning that you had to pull the levers back all the way to cause it to steer.
Luckily, I received the shop manual with the dozer, so today I reviewed the section on steering clutches and felt confident that I could adjust them.

I followed the directions to the letter until it said to "pull back clutch control arm until throw-out bearing just contacts the clutch fingers."
There were two problems here. First, I couldn't just "pull back clutch control arm" to any degree. The picture in the manual had a guy pushing the arm back with a screwdriver, but I couldn't make it budge. The second problem was, I looked very hard but wasn't able to see the throw-out bearing or the clutch fingers in the area where I was working in.
I put the steering control rod back on the ball joint and moved the lever to see if I could identify the T/O bearing or clutch fingers but never did.

Since I knew that it needed to be adjusted back a bit, what I ended up doing was while the control rod was still on the ball joint, I moved the levers back a bit (from the 1" blocks I had against the dash) and placed an object roughly 1/4" thick between the clutch control arm and the frame causing it to stay put. I removed the steering control rod from the ball joint and (releasing the levers back to the blocks), adjusted it to match the ball joint and followed the manual the rest of the way.

I hope I didn't screw anything up by doing that, though the steering is perfect now. It doesn't have so much slack before turning and much less effort is required.

For the experts out there now, what did I do wrong and why couldn't I move the clutch control arm as easily as it appeared in the manual?

[Lavoy]

The clutch arm will move kind of stiffly, it is possible that your throwout tube is getting rusty, so it is sticky and causing the problem. What you did should work fine, I can't see that you would hurt anything. Make sure to adjust the brake band as well if you didn't.
Lavoy

[jdemaris]

I've purchased a 1010 crawler w/ 6-way blade and noticed from the beginning that you had to pull the levers back all the way to cause it to steer.
Luckily, I received the shop manual with the dozer, so today I reviewed

, what did I do wrong and why couldn't I move the clutch control arm as easily as it appeared in the manual?

There are several areas where things can get hung up. On any of the Deere dry-clutch crawlers . . . first thing you ought to check is how freely the steering levers move when you hold your foot down hard on the brake-pedal. Often, the steering linkage gets stuck into the foot brake linkage and has to be fixed before any adjustments are made.

As to the rest, precision is not all that imporpant as long as you follow certain universal principles.

#1 there must be some free-play in the steering clutch linkage when you let go of the levers. You don't have to be able to see it; you can feel it, just as you can in a foot-clutch setup. Just be careful not to mistake linkage-slop for freeplay.

#2 the initial brake band adjustment via the 1/2" nut (takes 3/4" wrench) must be done before any other brake adjustments.

#3 the steering clutches MUST disengage before the brakes come on. Very easy to check. Point the crawler up a steep hill. Put it in a forward gear and start climbing the hill. Then, slowly pull back on both steering levers. You should get to a point where the crawler stop going forward, and then will roll backwards even though the clutch pedal is up and it's in a forward gear. If it just stops moving and won't roll, the brakes are engaging too soon.