My99

The saga continues...

I've got the 90 running great. However, the powersteering has issues. When you first fire it up in the morning it works great for a little while. Even after the engine is warm and running at normal speed it still works fine. Then after it warms up, it becomes very difficult to turn the wheel at low engine speed. It's like the pump is running too slowly, although the idle is doing pretty good at about 750rpm.

Here's a little background info. When I got the truck there was no fluid in the power steering pump. After I dropped the new motor in I put the old power steering pump on and at first I could not get any power steering when turning to the right, but would work marginally to the left. It would also whine something fierce. As time went on, I guess the fluid made it where it needed to go and the whine has gone away completely, and I now have power steering in both directions, and it's fine when at high RPM, but at idle it's barely working at all in either direction.

Can power steering pumps just "sort" of go out? It always seems to me they whine quite awful when they're actually going bad. Is there anything I can do to see what's wrong other than just buying another one?

An unrelated problem is that I think I have a seal bad somewhere in the steering gear, because it's leaking power steering fluid there pretty seriously. Anyone have any ideas where to start looking, or a common place for leaks? It drips all down off the driver's side frame-rail and up towards the bumper there. It's not leaking from the lines from what I can tell, but from the unit itself somewhow.

I don't think these two problems are related, but I can be wrong, I have virtually no experience with working on power steering.

Thanks.

lunatic14r

for your hard steering at idle i had the same problem it was a bad pump. for your leak clean down the area where the fluid is with brake clean and start it up and look for the leak.