Near Intersection of I-35 & I-90 Southern Mn. | I purchased a new 8120. At that point in time, it was possible to order it with or without the Deere Auto Steer valve. There was a fair difference in price. I ordered mine without the steering valve. I believe I would have been able to add it in later but it would have been very expensive. I don't know if it is possible to add a steering valve from a 20 series into an older 8x00.
I went with Ag Leader Steering. Since I did not have the built in Deere Auto Steer valve, an auxiliary valve kit was installed. Since my tractor has the ILS fron end, the auxiliary auto steer valve is quite large. It is bolted on the rear of the tractor cab. It connects to the SCV stack for oil in/out and also Load sense. The valve has a pair of hoses that run under the cab and tee into the steering lines below the steering wheel assembly. It is a bit of a tight fit but is possible to install.
This means that for normal manual steering the steering wheel controls the original valve and steers the tractor. When auto steer is engaged, the steering module controls the auxiliary valve which does the steering.
An electric sensor is attached to the diagnostic port on the Deere steering assembly. This is what informs the system to disengage auto steer when you turn the steering wheel. The steering valve is controlled by a steering module such as Steer Command. The system needs a way to determine where the front wheels are pointing. To do this Ag Leader provides a wheel position sensor (Pot.) with some linkage. My installer did not care for Ag Leader's approach and modified the bracket and linkage to better fit the ILS. I run the steering with an Ag Leader InCommand 1200. It works very well.
My experience is that the external steering valve approach works well for me. Granted our tractors are not 100% identical but I believe you could have very good results with an external steering valve.
A higher end GPS should help the situation. I don't believe using WAAS correction would be acceptable for me for planting. For tillage operations it is acceptable. I use an Ag Leader 7500 unlocked and subscribed to Terra Star Pro C in our current planting tractor.
Edited by tedbear 1/9/2026 11:51
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Steering valve on early 8x00
