oil for power steering 350

[glindy]

I know the book calls for 303 hyd in steering reservoir,but it had a leak somewhere and was empty when bought.
Looked and can't find a visible leak but res. was half empty after a ~week of use. If its leaking at the pump packing into engine,and engine oil is added with oil consumption of engine,will this amount of leakage damage engine?
Is it possible to run 15-40d engine oil in power steering instead of 303,so a small leak won't matter?

[tjdub]

Is it possible to run 15-40d engine oil in power steering instead of 303,so a small leak won't matter?

My 450 has the same problem, but I've never tried using engine oil. The biggest problem would probably be cold weather use since there's a big difference between hydraulic oil and engine oil at -10F.

Anyway, putting in a new seal in the pump is a fairly easy job. The only problem is that if it's been running dry since the Carter administration (like mine probably has been), there's a nice groove worn in the drive shaft so a new seal doesn't help much. A new shaft is still available from Deere but priced so high there's probably only one left. Someday I'm going to try to find a Speedi-Sleeve http://vsm.skf.com/en-US/HeavyDuty/Kits ... leeve.aspx that's the right size to fix it.

[glindy]

Stopped by the deere dealer for some #0 grease and asked them about using 15-40 in steering reservoir.
They said they saw no problem with doing it, as it won't be run much under 35-40 degree temps. Ideally repairing seal to fix it is better.