My pump startes to whine and when I added fluid I could see it was leaking. I drove it home and the whining stopped and the pump worked fine. I had to get a tire fixed so I drove it to the shop and the pump was OK till about a mile or so from the shop. When I pull the truck in there was a trail of fluid and when I backed out the same trail and it was whining. But when I took off the whining stopped and the steering got hard. I wrestled her home and found that the leak is from the top hose. It may seem like a no brainer but is the pump shot?

 

Maybe not. If it's out of fluid it will stop working until you fix the leak and fill er up agian.

 

I filled and it still is hard to turn. Now is the hose that runs to the top of the res. the return?

 

The pressure hose will have threaded fittings on both sides of the hose, the return line will use a hose clamp.

 

it sounds like the pump is your issue, plus a maybe a leaky hose, but i was just adding i had a weird one that i just fixed a couple of days ago. i had power steering turning right but no power turning left. and by the time i got to fixing it it was no power steering. so a new (used) box and a new (used) pump and everything to my amazement works perfect, no leaks or pump whine or nothing.. only thing i did wrong is the box came off of an F150, mine is a 250HD and the pitman is different. so when i swapped pitmans i indexed it the same as the 150 pitman was but it should have been different. now i'm a 1/3 of a turn out on the box causing my steering wheel to be 1/3 turned. oh well. i'll have to fix it when i get some more time.