Originally Posted by roller_steve

Hello: Just wanted to say that it's been a few days since I posted regarding this subject, but I did get my problem (the leaking power steering pump) fixed. Here was the problem:



The other day, while the truck was running, I noticed that the rusty lines were leaking quite a bit. I was sure that they were bad because the rust was to the point where it kept on peeling off of both the supply and return line. I thought of the possibility of the power steering box being bad, but I crossed my fingers and hoped that the problem was just the lines. I was right. I replaced both of them for about 50 or so bucks and was happy that everything worked out perfectly. I did run into a problem though, and this is something that I hope you guys spread like wildfire:



The duralast compression fitting on the supply line for the power steering pump has an extremely small protruding nipple, which makes it impossible for the line to tighten up and seal, even when you've cranked down on it real hard. I took it back to Autozone to see if they had one with a nipple that was protruding out further. To my dismay, the one they had in stock (an exact one) was the same. Stupid Duralast (made in Mexico) made the protruding nipple too short (something I need to write them about). Anyway, I went home and found out how to solve this problem (listen up on this one). I put 5 or 6 small metal washers inside the female end of the orifice on the supply side of the power steering pump. This orifice, I think, is made of brass. Basically, what I was doing was internally shimming it so that the nipple would be able to touch the surface of the 6 washers, thereby allowing it to give me restriction so that the line would seal properly. Since the washers already have a hole in them, they don't restrict the fluid flow. I also used 4 or 5 turns of teflon tape, and this helped seal it better on the outside threads. Boy was I happy when I did this. It made me think of all the unhappy people that have purchased these lines, only to not know how to improvise in a situation like this. I called Autozone and let them know all about it. They said they would spread the word.



In closing, just remember that so much of this stuff made outside of the U.S.A. doesn't meet factory specs, and as a consequence, you have to improvise like I did. I plan to contact the company about fixing this problem, but in the meantime, always believe that most anything can be improvised to get it to work.



Steve