[Richard]

Thank you for posting Alan.

Tom and I were aware that another owner Paul Tracy experienced a similar failure. And it took new hyd pump, new control solenoids, and new steering gear box before it was identified as a faulty fan motor. To the best of my understanding the hydrualic system feeds both the steering gear box and the fan with any pressure regulating device regulating the flow to either . If the fan motor internals allow excess flow through the fan motor, all of the hyd pressure is consumed just pumping fluid through the fan and back to the reservoir.

My comments are hindsight, but for others reading this thread, here is an idea I think would be fairly easy to try if this problem is suspected. Unscrew the hyd return line from the fan motor and cap it. The return to the reservoir would have to be capped also. If the steering problem goes away then voila! the problem is the fan motor. Of course you couldn't run like this for very long, but it's far less effort and money than replacing the hyd pump or steering gear box.