in the process of driving to get out of m driveway in 3 feet of snow my power steering just quit on me. isnt working at all. any ideas?

is there fluid in the pump resivoir? does it make a whining sound when turning? sounds like a fluid leak or bad pump...



Did I mention I drive a 2000 Lumina now?-----wigm-tuners.org member

fluid is full no whinning. is there a fuse or relay for the ps. didnt see one but then again didnt look real hard

Power steering is not run by electricity, so there won't be a fuse to find. It's either run by a belt or gear driven through the camshaft. In your case, I believe it is gear driven. Probably a bad pump.



2010 Subaru Impreza WRX Limited
1999 Cavalier Z24 Supercharged
1999 Grand AM SE (Beater Car)
1997 GMC Sierra
2007 Honda CBR 600RR
2005 Honda TRX450R

its gear driven and sounds like it just gave out by spun bearings. the pump is shot and needs replacement. not to cheap but a driveway swapable part. if u need to do it your self then i have a great picture write up in third gen section http://www.j-body.org/forums/read.php?f=30&i=45757&t=45694#45757. its on a 2.4 but the swap is next to identical. we spun ours earlier this year. doesnt take much lol.

well from the responses i'm guessing its a spun bearing. i was cranking the wheel back and forth because i was stuck in the snow. oh well. based on the write up it shouldn't be too hard. and they really aren't that expensive so i guess i'll have a project for tomorrow.

thanks guys

I know that these are driven off of the cam on the Ecotec - so did GM put in any kind of a "shear pin" to protect the timing chain if the pump happened to seize? I'm not saying that the pump is seized, but that maybe a pin broke that's preventing it from getting turned now. I know that on some of the full size GM trucks, that they have a bad habit of breaking the shaft right off of the pump if it's turned hard into a stop at high engine RPM. I'm just saying that the loads can get pretty high under the right conditions.
Maybe it's worth pulling the pump off first to have a look before buying more parts. I've never looked through that part of the manual yet, since it doesn't apply to my car (LN2). If I remember I'll take a quick look before I go to bed tonight.
John