(ET) Steering skipping

My Alltraxed E15 is having trouble again with the steering - hard to move and skips if you push it too hard. A number of years ago I had the same problem and fixed it by following the steps I found in the archive. I've searched the archive again, and all I found was this:

If your steering is skipping, here is what you might want to try:

1) Loosen the bolts on the pillow bearing up at the front of the sector shaft. This is important.
2) Loosen the collar on the steering wheel and pull it out of the steering block at the bottom.
3) Take off all the shims and the cotter pin from the sector shaft. This is really important as otherwise you will never get things lined up right.
4) Push the sector shaft forward till it hits the front wheel beam. Get some slack.
5) Loosen the two bolts that hold the steering block. They're the closest ones to the block; the other 4 hold the box to the tractor.
6) Blow out the crud behind the block and push it all the way back. Go all the way.
7) Tighten the steering block bolts.
8) Put in the sector shims and cotter
9) Put the steering shaft gear back into the block. It should mesh tightly.
10) Tighten the bolts on the pillow bearing.
That should do it. My problem was if I tried to tighten the block bolts with the washers and cotter in place it would never line up snugly. Skip skip. Then when I put it together without loosening the pillow bearing bolts it would bind there.
Fun.
Chris

Unfortunately I didn't save the date of this post. But this seems more complicated than my very limited recollection of what I did previously that involved adding shims, which cured the problem back then. I have a better recollection of finally finding the shims (brass load bearings or something like that) in the plumbing department at the hardware store, than I do of putting them on the tractor.

Any ideas?

I have a jpg of the steering assembly (surprisingly called "steering assembly.jpg"), which I also found in the archives. I've tried to follow these instructions looking at the picture, but the names are different. What are the "pillow bearing", the "sector shaft", the "steering block" (and I'm only on step 2!), front wheel beam… I might be able to figure it out if I actually went out and looked at the tractor, but it's cold and dark, and I thought I'd try the experts out there before it got colder and darker, as it will be very hard to turn once the snowblower is on it!

Thanks,
Doug McCorkle

Alltraxed E15