Power Steering Driving Me Insane

[Mark]

Bare with me, there is no way I can avoid this becoming a long story, I’ve been trying to get the power steering working on this thing since August.

Car- 87 Trans Am, has a stock Saganaw 800 series steering box (HX paint code “high effort” 12.7:1 box) and saganaw pump. It has Z06 vette wheels on it (fat tires on the front) making steering problems a bigger deal.

When I took the pump off the engine in May or June the power steering worked fine. I swapped the top end on the engine (heads, cam, intake, added an electric water pump…) Because of the accessory change and because of some plumbing I have on the front of the heads I needed a different power steering bracket. I used this style:
[IMG]http://i.ebayimg.com/images/a/(KGrHqJ,!mIFBEJd5vBPBQSMY(SgJ!~~/s-l500.jpg[/IMG]

Which also meant pulling the pump out of the reservoir and drilling a hole for the bottom bolt through the back of the reservoir (the 3rd gen f-body pumps don’t have it, seems like every other one does, the pump inside had it also so I just located the hole and added the o-ring seal).

I bolted it back on, started it up and no power steering. Pump was somewhat low while I tinkered with getting the engine running well enough to test drive it, no power steering even after topping it off and bleeding (tried both front end up in the air turning the wheels back and forth and pulling a vacuum on it), I figured, “well crud, I ran the pump dry and killed it.”

I had another pump in a bucket in the garage that I pulled off an ’83 TA that worked fine when I pulled it. Slapped it on, bled it, started it up and, “Great, have power steering again.” 6 miles later no more power steering.

I always thought these things were basically indestructible short of feeding them gravel or something but a bunch of people told me that I have fouled fluid killing the pump. Cardone has a big site with PS diagnostics and basically said the same thing, and that after flushing the system I need to run an inline filter.

Fine.

I flushed it till i got clear fluid out of it, flushed it some more, added a $25 cardone inline filter, grabbed the pump off of my ’87 Formula parts car (I think I used the hoses off of that car or the ones that I pulled off with the previous pump just to change them out), topped it off, bled it, topped it off again.

I have power steering!

A few miles later I don’t have power assist again.

What the heck is going on?!?

Fine, test the pump, disconnected the pressure line coming from the pump, start the engine, and it shoots all the fluid out in like a second or 2.

Ok, fine the pump is working, somehow in this mess I screwed up the gear, but why the heck does it work for a few miles every time I put a new pump in???

Whatever, I pull the gear and started trying to find a correct replacement. Every one, no matter what the source seems to come with the same rebuilder’s sticker on the part in the box, and EVERY ONE either is the wrong ratio or has the wrong stop to stop travel, ARGHH!!!

I finally give in, “I just need to get this thing driving…” and grabbed the best of the bad rebuilds and stuck it in (wrong ratio, correct travel). No joy, SAME DAMNED THING!!!

I decide I’m replacing everything, fresh rebuilt pump (autozone, yea, I know, but they could get it fastest and it’s the same damned part in the box as from anyone else), and I’ll find a gear. I end up spending another week or 2 on a quest for a correct rebuilt gear done well, and find that even the high end rebuilders like AGR have been shipping the wrong ratio boxes (I have a couple of bad youtube videos up of testing gears).

OK, fine, I can’t win. I order a rebuild kit and do it myself. Paint the gear up really nice, get it back in the car, new (rebuilt) pump swapped into the reservoir. At this point I’m seriously pissed off, have gone through literally gallons of fluid filling, draining, flushing, bleeding… Seems like half my life is covered in power steering fluid.

YAY! I have power steering!

For 13 miles. It starts feeling funny, getting heavier. First it just felt funny, then I still have power steering if I rev the engine, but not at idle. HUH???

I throw some tools around, kick some things, go to bed. The next day I need to move the car to clean some of the mess I made, start it, HEY, i HAVE POWER STEERING!!! For about 15miles, then I start loosing it again.

Ok, I’ve been doing more googling, a lot of failures are attributed to a restriction in the return line. I remove the cardone filter. Nothing.

The return line has a loop of hard line running under the radiator as a cooler. I decide that’s the only thing I haven’t changed. I make a short hard line and fitting so I can bypass it so my return is just about 3″ of hardline and maybe 8″ of hose. The same.

More googling, find 4 threads in a row that talk about those rebuilt pumps and getting 2 or more of them that were bad out of the box. Fine, I pull the pump, pull the pump out of the reservoir, return it and get another. Buy actual new hoses just because I can.

Same thing.

After some more searching online I contact a few of the “high end” rebuilders. Daniel at redheadsteeringgears.com seems helpful. After some discussion with them I get “well we could sell you a steering gear or rebuild yours but based on what you told me, the tests I gave you I don’t think that you have a bad steering gear, sounds like your pump is crapping out, try another.

Fine, I’ve gone through this with the gear, I’ll do it with the pump. I got a rebuild kit took the 2 remaining used pumps that I had in the garage apart and picked the best/least worn parts and rebuilt it. Put it back in the tank/reservoir and got it on the car on a Saturday.

Drove it around till last tuesday and it was fine, till it suddenly started getting heavy again. It was uncharacteristically cold here on the east coast for a few days, this thing seems to be heat sensitive, maybe the few cold days/nights let me drive it for a while before it got warm enough. BUT why did it start acting up on a 30some* night???

Daniel at RedHead is stumped, “maybe you should consider converting to a manual gear or go with ram assist like the 4×4 guys do…”

This is pretty much where I am now, when I start it up cold it works perfectly. After driving it around a few miles it starts getting heavy (heavy enough that I can’t turn the wheel without the car moving or without revving the engine some), but I don’t seem to completely loose power steering, at least in a 30 or so mile drive. If I let it cool off and start it again it all starts over.

Anyone know what is going on?

Anyone have any ideas what to try next?

Topic

[Charles]

Sounds like a restriction on the suction side. I am thinking when you start the engine, pressure is available until it hits the return restriction. Once the pressure equalizes on both sides of the steering unit you have no differential to provide force. Your pump pressure is probably OK. Make sure you don’t have a plumbing mistake that keeps fluid from returning to the pump.

[Mark]

[quote=”Jotmon1″ post=150334]Sounds like a restriction on the suction side. I am thinking when you start the engine, pressure is available until it hits the return restriction. Once the pressure equalizes on both sides of the steering unit you have no differential to provide force. Your pump pressure is probably OK. Make sure you don’t have a plumbing mistake that keeps fluid from returning to the pump.[/quote]

I mentioned in my original description that I tried completely removing the return, made a fitting and a hose that went straight back to the return on the pump. I also checked to make sure that the return on the pump reservoir was completely clear one of the times I had it apart. Even still (as in I checked that even if I don’t believe it could be the problem), I don’t really see how a restriction in the return would cause the steering to get heavy and then fail 10-20 minutes/miles later, I would expect it wouldn’t work at all or work till maybe the end of the street and then quit.

[Charles]

Think of it as a hydraulic jack. You block the return line (jack valve) and start pumping. Initially the jack moves freely but once it reaches its limit it stops moving and gets hard to pump. If you crack the valve to the reservoir (talking about the jack) you can continue to pump and some fluid returns.

I know it is a lot of trouble but see if you can open the system so that you can supply fluid to the pump on the one hand and catch the fluid coming from the steering unit in a bucket. I believe you will find the volume low.

Just remember that I am not there am very old and may not actually know WTF I am talking about. Sorry but that’s what you get for free.

[Mark]

[quote=”Jotmon1″ post=150337]Think of it as a hydraulic jack. You block the return line (jack valve) and start pumping. Initially the jack moves freely but once it reaches its limit it stops moving and gets hard to pump. If you crack the valve to the reservoir (talking about the jack) you can continue to pump and some fluid returns.

I know it is a lot of trouble but see if you can open the system so that you can supply fluid to the pump on the one hand and catch the fluid coming from the steering unit in a bucket. I believe you will find the volume low.[/quote]

I did that a few iterations ago, it emptied the whole reservoir almost instantly, like in a second or 2. That was when I decided to try another steering gear.

Just remember that I am not there am very old and may not actually know WTF I am talking about. Sorry but that’s what you get for free.

LOL, I don’t know what to make of that… thanks for the help. I’m in the odd position that I’m usually the guy that people go to with mechanical problems, so the people that know me usually take the “Heck, if Mark doesn’t know it I’m not going to figure it out…” attitude…

I wish I could find a PS pressure tester that i could borrow, test pressure when it’s working vs when it isn’t, but I’m not sure how I would drive it around connected even if I had one, there is literally about 3″ between the pump, gear, radiator (that’s actually against the front of the gear), pitman arm, sway bar, headers… on a car that’s very low to start with, I’m not sure that I could find space for the extra lines, gauge, valve… that that would involve.

[Charles]

Not sure where you are but Northern Tool sells a Pressure guage that goes up to 5,000 LBS. The Power steering should be less than 1,000 as I remember. Perhaps plumbing in a guage would be useful.
http://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_200322889_200322889
Here is a link:

[Mark]

Huh, I have a TS about an hour from me in 2 different directions…

I don’t think that the gauge is actually the hard part, it’s working out the plumbing/fittings. The system is supposed to work at around 300psig with nothing going on, and 1000-1200psig is where the relief opens (depending on piston height). The pump is supposed to be able to generate >1500psig.

The testers are a set of fittings so you can plumb it inline with a valve after the gauge so you can test running pressure and then close the valve and test the relief pressure, so I think that you basically need a set of fittings/gauge/valve that can be reliable to about 2000psi.

[Brian]

Sounds like you win most frustrating problem of the day award.
I may be pissing in the wind here, but you mentioned having wider than normal tires and not original wheels if I read that correctly. This makes me wonder if wheel offset for the wheel bearing is different and over stressing one or both in the front.
I know that bearings normally make noise before pooping out, but having the wrong offset wheels causes big stress in a small amount of time.
Example – I had an odd job of driving from Dallas to east Texas back and fourth to bring back a customer’s Corvette collection. One of his c3’s has the smaller than normal wire rim wheels with spacers jacking the tires further out to the sides, like the crappy low riders of the past. On this particular c3, I changed the wheel bearings when my body shop did a full frame off resto less than 300 miles before this ordeal. The left front wheel left the car, with no noises to warn me of impending doom. It passed up my boss in front of me who was in a stock c4.

Do you have original tires and wheels for the front so you can test that theory and do some checks on the bearings?

I know its a slim chance, but you sound in the verge of calling an old priest and a young priest.

I hope you get it fixed soon man, sounds like a fun car.

[Mark]

[quote=”peshewa” post=150381]Sounds like you win most frustrating problem of the day award.[/quote]

Just of the day? this one has been driving me nuts since august…

I may be pissing in the wind here, but you mentioned having wider than normal tires and not original wheels if I read that correctly. This makes me wonder if wheel offset for the wheel bearing is different and over stressing one or both in the front.
I know that bearings normally make noise before pooping out, but having the wrong offset wheels causes big stress in a small amount of time.
…
Do you have original tires and wheels for the front so you can test that theory and do some checks on the bearings?

I know its a slim chance, but you sound in the verge of calling an old priest and a young priest.

I hope you get it fixed soon man, sounds like a fun car.

The stock wheels are 16×8 with a 0 offset on the front (16mm on the rear) and 245/50-16 tires. These are 17×9.5 with 54mm offset but I’m running a 2″ bolt on spacer, so the offset should end up being a net 1.2mm, the tire is not that much bigger, a 265/40-17, the end result is that the offset is very close to stock (and the non-performance package cars got 15×7″ wheels with a 13mm offset, so in reality my current offset is in between that of the stock wheel options for the car), and the wider tires fit almost like the stock tires in the wheel wells. Even if the offset was way off, it would greatly increase the scrub radius of the front suspension and if extreme enough may cause accelerated bearing wear, but these bearings are pretty big- you can go WAY past reasonable before you end up with a problem, and even so it doesn’t affect the power steering assist (depending on alignment might affect road feel when movinging)

Thanks, I hope to figure it out soon also, the last club event of the season is next weekend and it’s over an hour away on I-95, meaning I can’t drive the car there like this and don’t have a trailer that I can easily borrow. Even if I did I’m not sure I have the guts to make dragstrip passes with the steering sometimes working and sometimes not, I worry that I might miss the turnaround at the big end of the track at speed.

[Donald]

Get one off a truck. 4×4 to be specific. Bet that solves it. Heavier duty pump means more power. The other ones probably ground themselves to pieces from a lot of extra load. Just a thought.

[Mark]

[quote=”Rattman1″ post=150581]Get one off a truck. 4×4 to be specific. Bet that solves it. Heavier duty pump means more power. The other ones probably ground themselves to pieces from a lot of extra load. Just a thought.[/quote]

As far as I can tell most of the truck pumps are the same inside (the rebuild kit PN is the same), but they do have the extra boss that I had to add a hole to use on the f-body pump, and have some different return line. The ones for trucks with Hydroboost are supposedly the same with a fitting added (haven’t seen how they do that). There is also a high volume version where the rotor assembly is larger and the back cover is bumped out in the opposite direction, but those come in a larger housing and the only documentation that I’ve found is that they were found on things like buses and some topkicks, OTOH I’m pretty sure that I don’t need high volume, I mean with the exception of the pump mount this is a stock power steering system, and the type 2 pumps and aftermarket “performance” pumps _decrease_ volume to save power and supposedly still work.

[Author]

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