skshepherd

Hello all, its been a while, the 95 2.7 manual tacoma had been doing great no problems at 206k miles. However it developed a powersteering leak. It was leaking on the return line, but not the return hose, the return tubing that the hose clamps to. The tubing runs down beside the front brace just below the engine and above the skid plate. The tubing runs down, makes a loop then goes back towards the steering box then connects to a pws hose that does connect to the steering box.
The steeler wanted $158 for the little bit of metal tubing that loops around there. Since it was on the low pressure side, I decided to cut the rusted and crumbling part of the tube out and just use some more pws hose of the same length and slide it over the ends of the good tubing and lightly clamp it.

I then filled the truck back up with pws fluid and turned it back and forth a bit to get any air out. No more leak but it still seemed a little stiff so I jacked up the front end (here is where I think I went wrong) and with the engine off turned the wheel back and forth a bunch of times watching the pws fluid bubble out. Then I turned the engine on and did it and it actually got worse. I tried to drive it around and it was like I had no power steering.

Splicing into the tubing should be the same kind of procedure as replacing the rubber low pressure hose right? BTW the pump is not and was not ever making that moaning or groaning sound. But now it does not have any power steering. I can rev the engine and see the fluid in the resevoir circulating. However, the little vacumn type switch on the high pressure side never opens up to let the TB suck more air in.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, sorry for the long post.

Thanks in advance,
Steve

skshepherd

Any ideas?
Thanks,

ByThaBay

well first I would make sure you dont' have any more air bubbles in the PS fluid. I think it's okay to have some at first, but after a day or so they should go away. If you still have bubbles then u might have a crack somewhere...

another thing to check is if you used the right kind of fluid.. also check to make sure that the pump is pumping..?

it's also possible that there is another problem somewhere in the rack & pinion system.. perhaps some of the metal pipe you cut off got stuck somewhere.. maybe even in the pump brearings?

good luck - let us know how it turns out!