Does power steering fluid ever need to be changed out?

swschrad

2000 explorer v8 with 28,800 miles on it. got two quarts of mercon, a marinade injector 2-ounce hypodermic with 12 holes in the 8-inch needle, and the magic gallon jug of recyclable mess. cut the end off the needle and covered the holes with 2 layers of electrical tape. the glop I pulled out was opaque but cherry-red. siphoned to the bottom of the resivoir, then refilled with new fluid, started 'er up, and gently turned lock-to-lock three times. repeated four more times, at the end I was siphoning out clear red fluid, so I probably got all the dirt out. couldn't believe all the suspended dirt in the factory fluid.

have not yet got around to bleeding out all the old brake fluid, but the stuff in the resivoir was getting a little greyish as well.

oh, yes... either get new suctioning stuff for each job (mixing these fluids will kill both systems) or clean the billy hell out of the system with lots of rags and 99% isopropyl alcohol, get it dry before doing anything else with the suctioning gear. if fluid softens anything up, don't monkey around, throw it out now.

fleetwoodsimca

Great approaches you engineered.

I very recently used my "home tuned" Mason jar and Mityvac combo unit to remove the power steering fluid from my 1997 Geo reservoir. It worked quite well. I didn't enjoy the cleaning at the end, but that is mandatory in rules for acceptable garages!

swschrad

and I think I need to charge myself $2.75 each for the two jobs. there's a little watering hole down the road I will pay myself at

ywilson

By the shop that does my oil. They have a machine that does the suction out and put's the new fluid in. Works great and it pulled out all the old gunk.

fleetwoodsimca

I love to hear stories about tools I don't yet have... >:oÞ

swschrad

lots of number threes, however, so I just hang extra weight on with whatever I want close at hand so it doesn't go floating away.

fleetwoodsimca

Would you agree that the black, nasty smeary stuff under the lid of the power steering dip stick is some kind of degradation of the rubber in the floppy baffle? Well, not all reservoirs have this feature, but many do. I consider that occurance a signal to change fluid as well as clean up in general. I hope to stay enthusiastic enough to keep on diluting my several power steering reservoirs over time. Clean is better than dirty, even if no functional difference can be demonstrated. (;o\

swschrad

what rotted it is a good question, since it's a reasonable assumption that Misfire Motors, Inc. designers had a cheat sheet that somebody stole from another automaker who got it from a rubber supplier that read in a magazine that buna-S rots from thus and so, and iso-somethingorother rubber rots from such and thereupon, etc. if 5000 folks with the same model of car say theirs are all rotted, then the assumption that compatible rubber was used may be invalid.

could have also been splashed with suntan oil in the plant on Monday morning and wiped so the foreman wouldn't notice, or something like that.

fleetwoodsimca

Yesterday I played in the garage with my daughter's Geo Prizm. I used up the remainder of a quart of power steering fluid in a serial dilution with mixing/testing runs. I could tell that the remixed fluid was getting cleaner and more transparent with each dilution cycle. At the end of my 3 pints of fresh, I stopped. I proceeded on the basis that using a good grade of power steering fluid was as good or better than using Dexron III-- the latter being the fluid suggested in the owners manual.