Damnit, tomorrow me and the wife were going to take my truck to a dealership to see if anyone would be interested in working out a deal....
Tonight I was getting some stuff out of it and I noticed there was oil all over the ground, like a 6 or so inch circle, and it was fresh.
I climbed underneath the truck and found it's actually power steering fluid, and it's coming from the point where the steering from the steering column meets the actual steering mechanism(I don't know what it's called). It's literally dripping from all around the thing, not actively, but you could tell while it was running it definently was. PS fluid is very, very low. The reservoir was full three days ago, now I can almost see the bottom of the container....
Can I refill the reservoir and try to drive it? I just need to make it tomorrow, Friday my wife can drop me off at work. What's the worst that can happen?
When I drove home it drove perfectly fine..nothing abnormal. For weeks now it's made a rubber-squeeking type sound occassionally with turns(I figured it was a bushing going bad and was planning on getting it fixed over the holidays if I couldn't get a good deal on a trade in.
@!#$ :*(
if you have to drive it... overfill it with some PS fluid... if you are planning on replacing/ fixing it anyway, throw some ps fluid with leakstop in it. just be sure to check it each time you go for a drive... and have extra on hand. maybe someone else will chime in, but i say it shouldnt be a problem.
Probably the input shaft seal on the top. They go out quite frequently. Its either find a new seal and find someone to put it in, or take it to the dealer or any other shop and get a new rack.
Sounds like a heavy leak too.. You may find you lose Power assist or its intermittant which could be quite dangerous if you dont expect it. So I would drive it only if needed.
Buildin' n' Boostin for 08' - Alex Richards
It's 10 miles eachway, top speed is 40ish mph. But it is a truck...those big tires would be REALLY hard to steer without PS..damn near impossible for me probably....
I'm headed to the store now to pick up some stop leak. See if I can put some of that in..I did a little search after my initial freakout and a lot of people say that the stop leak seems to work pretty well. I'll give it a shot. I'll just fill it up and stop at 5 miles to check it. If it looks OK I'll just head in to work and refill it before I drive home. I'll give it a test go tonight to see how quickly the fluid drains out.
Anything else I should do?
I filled up the reservoir and let it warm up in the driveway, steered to the extreme angles for 2 or 3 minutes, no leaks...I took it for a drive, probably a mile or so..surprised I didn't get pulled over for drunk driving all the swerving I was doing..Got home and according to the dipstick it didn't leak anything tangible. Parked it and no leaks thus far....really, really weird. (there's a cold and a hot measuring point on the dipstick). I'll know more after the trek to work tomorrow morning.
Regardless..now there's a bunch of oil looking stains on my undercarriage..and I'm going to have to clean that up BEFORE I can try to get a trade in value...Sucks because tomorrow I have a babysitter so we'd have time to deal if it came to it. Sigh..have to wait until next week soemtime now. It'd be pointless and a bad idea to get it valued right now right? It's pretty obvious from under the truck that there was a leak.
Well I would highly recommend cleaning the area with some engine clean and pressure wash it.Gunk or advance autos heavy duty brand works fine.I used lucas power steering leak on my tractor trailer and it held up the pit man arm seal going to the pump for 3 months b4 it finally blew.This is a short term fix if the seal is in bad shape but,may get u by and this product is sold at advance auto and auto zone for about 8 bux.I would def clean the area regardless and the lucas is fine with any pwr strg fluid.
