something to check.

A few weeks ago  I blew a steering hose turning the front wheels not realizing they were in a rut caused by the rear wheels spinning pulling saplings.  fortunately this was caused by a compromised steering hose, or I probably would have blown a ram seal or something else worse than a hose.  Maybe that’s a good thing in the grand scheme of things, but the hose had worn on a weld for the battery box on the frame, simply using a zip tie between the two hoses fixes that problem. If you have a 284/254 you may want to inspect your steering hoses. Last time I did something this dumb I broke a weld on the ram mount on the front axle housing, took 10 minutes to drag out the wire feed welder and 10 cents worth of argon/co2 and 10 inches of wire to fix.