IH 300 Utility hydraulic problems

First: what manual is appropriate for basic maint. that includes the hydraulics, PTO and loader?

Second: Slowly the bucket has begun to sag under its own weight, rasied fine and tilted up. It has slowly begun to not tilt up at all. It will raise and lower fine. Now I get no power to the tilt at all and the lever has very little movement and seems to not push in. There is fluid in the res.(It has been quite cold and water could have been in the line and frozen?) I was given the tractor but I am in a over my head without reference material. I have some time and money to put in to it and want to learn about it. There arent a lot of local resources for help. I am somewhat mechanical when I have manuals and can ask questions when I need to. Any thoughts (besides get rid of it) THANKS

One caution, the reservoir cover, though not that awful heavy, is cumbersome to lift, and the screen mounts to it and hangs down so that you shouldn't sit it on it's bottom edge. Probably best to use a hoist of some sort to remove it.

1. You cylinders/bucket should not sag absent a leaking seal in a cylinder or somewhere else. If all cylinders are sagging then the leak is somewhere else and most likely a bypass check valve. It could be that it is plugged, iced open or whatever. This would also account for not enough fluid and pressure to move the bucket all the time. Go to www.caseih.com and search for parts for your model or a similar model of that age. There will be a diagram for everything. Look also to see if any lines go to the case under the seat cause there may be a check valve there that may be the culprit and frozen water/sludge may be the problem somewhere.

2. I am at the point on mine, that I am just going to start opening a line (with the tractor off) and then test it to see if there is enough fluid and psi coming out and do this until I isolate the problem part.

3. You can flow test your own pump. Break a line loose and put it in a 5 gal bucket. Start tractor and the valve for whatever line you broke loose. As an example, a 12 gpm pump will put out about 1 gal every 5 seconds. Mark your bucket and check the time it takes to do a couple gallons. Just don't do enough to empty your supply to the pump. Doing this trial and error method may help you find the bad part. The flow test doesn't tell you about the exact pressure though. You have to put a tee in somewhere with a 3000# psi guage to do that. I haven't bought one cause those guages are not very cheap and I haven't found one yet. But from the flow test, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to guess whether you have a problem or not with psi as it may just blow it out so fast you can't keep it in the bucket. These high pressures are something to be very careful of and you don't want to be in the line of fire.

On the manuals, look to this website or do a search on ebay for your model and manual. Lots of manuals there at varying prices.