I have a leak my van's power steering rack. It's coming from the area where the steering shaft goes in. It's pretty gunky down there, but it's slowly cleaning itself up . I need to refill it once a day or it starts to groan. I just replaced the pump with a lightly-used one and flushed out the old fluid a couple of weekends ago. The leak started promptly after that, but I didn't have time to deal with it before taking it on a week's vacation.

I think the leak is coming from the seal at the steering shaft. Is this a replaceable seal or am I faced with replacing the rack? To me it seems to leak too fast to be just a bad seal.

Any help offered is greatly appreciated.

It's a 95 3.0l shorty 2WD

Cheers,
Eric

 

I have a 92 3.0 shorty 2WD. I decided to clean that area of my engine compartment with the usual engine cleaner. The area you are talking about was nice and clean afterwards but the next morning on the ride to work, it started to groan real bad. Saw the leak the same place as yours. I bought some power steering fluid with sealer. It said to drive for about 200 miles to see if it would fix the leak. It was fixed after about 100 miles. That was about 4 months ago. Still cool.

Tony

 

Try this stuff. It is so good , it is almost to good to be true. I have no affiliation with this company whatsoever. Cleans and takes care of engine, transmission and power steering etc.!

http://www.auto-rx.com/

If you don't want to go that route (highly reccommended) I have had previous luck with Lucas Power Stereing additive

 

I have tried different stop leaking power steering fluids, but my leak is now too far gone I think. It will drain all the fluid with the van just static.

So back to the original question: Is this a replaceable seal? If so, does anyone have any experience with it, and can offer any tips?

Thanks.

 

They dont make rebuild kits for steering racks anymore ,if its comming from the seal were the steering shaft goes in you will have to replace the whole rack ..i had this problem right after i got the van the only option was to replace the rack ...its around $100 ..hope this helps

 

I had the same problem with my 91 AWD. I tried every Chemical known to man (and Woman) with no success.
Since I was going to replace the lower control arm bushing anyway I decided to fix the leak in the rack.
I found rebuild kits but no one stocked them so in the interest of time I paid $88 at autozone for a rebuilt unit. Leak fixed. If you have a two wheeler then it shouldn't be as bad as the AWD.

 

debeer;

funny you mention auto-rx, I stand by what you said, the stuff is so good I haven't posted about it here for fear of being shot down by skeptics. (I myself would have been one if it weren't for all the feedback on BITOG that convinced me)
It brought a lot of life back for the a4ld & engine on my aero. It is really weird when a product finally works as announced!


cheers!

 

not sure how to delete the double post

 

Well, I must confess I never did try the auto rx stop leak. And if it weren't for the fact that I had to add fluid every day, and that my driveway looked like an oil slick, I would have!

I also had some play in the rack, so I just decided to replace it. Just for kicks I went to the dealer. Their price for the rack was $200 (I'm pretty sure it was a rebuild). Then I checked with the service department and they said about $259 for the labor.

I then went to AutoZone, as a previous poster said they got one there, but they don't show them any more in their system (actually it said "not required" in the computer ). Then I went to a Car Quest affiliate and they had one for me that afternoon. List price was $149 but they discounted it to $97.

For those who are not professionals, let me relate my amateur success story :

I had never done anything like that installation before, so I was a little intimidated at first. But now that I know, there was nothing to it. Two lines had to be disconnected (pressure and return) disconnect the tie rods, disconnect the steering shaft, remove the two mount bolts and the whole thing comes out. Piece of cake.

I removed the tie rods from the old unit and put them on the new one (I had just replaced them last year, so they were still in good shape). Then I put the new unit in place, connected the steering shaft, mount bolts, and the pressure and return lines, and bleed the system.

It was actually pretty easy. The one part I messed up apparently was flushing the system. I filled the reservoir with new fluid, but it ran straight out the open line, so I assumed that all the old fluid was already gone. Once I had it all connected, I started it up, and a bunch of old fluid pumped into the reservoir. Not exactly what I should have done, but I was just so happy to have it all back together I didn't worry about it.