There were fourteen hoses in that bundle. Some fed the steering, some the front-wheel drive, and one specific line ran the lift cylinder for the corn head. Cutting the wrong one would turn a $50 leak into a $2,000 repair bill.
When you first look at a hydraulic schematic in a Technical Manual (TM), it can look like abstract art. However, these diagrams follow standard ISO (International Organization for Standardization) symbols. Learning to decode these symbols is the key to mastery. John Deere Hydraulic Hose Diagram
His phone buzzed. His wife, Ellen, had texted a photo from the office computer: a scanned page from the dog-eared technical manual. It was blurry. The lines were grey on grey. It was useless. There were fourteen hoses in that bundle