Good Afternoon everyone,

I flushed and filled my power steering fluid today and am having a lot of trouble that I didn't have previously. The old fluid was REALLY old and basically black. I did not have any steering problems with the old fluid in and I did get an alignment done with the old fluid in, but I don't know if that makes any difference. I also tried flushing and filling with Prestone power steering fluid with leak stop yesterday(it said it was universal!) , but decided to "do it right" with ATF today after I realized the manual called for ATF."

Here's what I did:

1. Drained the reservoir with a turkey baster
2. drained the fluid from the low pressure return line
3. worked the wheel from lock to lock several time to push the old fluid out and into my catch can.
4. added Valvoline maxlife ATF to the reservoir until it was coming out of the return line
5. reconnected the return line and clamp and topped off the reservoir,
6. worked the wheel from lock to lock probably 20 times
7. topped the reservoir off, caped it, and turned the engine on for a second, and then checked the reservoir again.
   1. Problem 1: the fluid kept looking frothy despite my attempts to bleed the line of air. I did steps 6 and 7 several times (not always adding fluid of course) and it would keep looking frothy.
8. I turned the engine on and tried working the wheel from lock to lock and it seemed to be shaking and noisy so I shut off the engine
9. I lowered my truck to the ground and topped off the reservoir gain since it seemed to have gone down.
10. I worked the wheel lock to lock with the engine on and it seemed a bit better but it was having more trouble on turning left than right.
11. I took the truck for a drive with several turns and checked and topped the fluid as necessary
    1. Problem 2: Turning to the right while driving is pretty good, turning to the left is more stiff and the pump does seem to make a little more noise. When at a stop turning to the left or right shakes the truck and steering wheel.
12. I drove back home and topped off the reservoir again and then looked for leaks. I think there might be a small leak somewhere, but It's hard to say since I spilled some fluid so I I'm not sure if it's just that working its way down to drip off the frame or what. I inspected the lines but there didn't seem to be any obvious leak.

So, I'm at my wits end. I am probably going to take it to a Mechanic either tomorrow or Tuesday, but I wanted to check with you folks to see if I am missing something.

Similar stuff was happening to my ranger when I used Prestone PS fluid yesterday, but I thought it was because I wasn't using ATF like the manual calls for.

Any thoughts?

 

You can clean up the spill with some engine cleaner or brake cleaner. Last time I did this quite a while back,(changed the pump) it took a couple days of driving and sitting to get all the air out. Used prestone with no problem. The air has to make its way back to the reservoir and rise out of the fluid, which takes sitting with pump not running.

 

Thanks for the tip Grumpa!

I guess I'll drive it for a little while this week and see if it improves. I had no idea it takes so long to work the air out of the system. The instructional video I referenced to made it look so easy, but I guess that's always the case haha!

 

I think you may be on to something Grumpa. I drove to work, let it sit, check the fluid after work and the fluid was low so I topped it up to the cold fill level and drove back home which took like 20-30 mins. Once back home I checked and it seemed to need more to reach the "Hot" fill level, so I added some more.

The steering seems to be better now, though I'm still having some shaking when at a stop and moving the steering wheel. I'm hoping it's just a little more air that needs to be worked out, but so far so good!

I'll keep ya posted if it goes away fully this week.