The Saturday of Car Week we walked out of the hotel and hit the remote start and heard a loud POP sound from the truck. It continued to run okay and nothing physically looked bad under the hood so we attempted to drive away. No power steering. I stopped by the nearest gas station and checked it out. No fluid moving in the reservoir, nothing leaking. We lived with it for the weekend.
Back at home I parked it and tore out the power steering pump. Nothing looked broken, but I ordered up a rebuild kit and went through it when I got the chance.
With the pump refreshed there was no change. It was time to bite the bullet and order a new rack.
The box arrived from Lithia Toyota in far less than ideal shape. I really wonder what UPS does to some of these packages during the 8 hour drive to me. Luckily Lithia took no time at all in taking care of it and had the missing parts on there way to me shortly.
Once I had the second tie rod end I began the installation. I found the original rack had a pretty bad bind in it, causing a very tough movement. During disassembly, I also found the rag joint had seen better days. I ordered a new joint from Lithia and assembled everything once it showed up. Again I had no power steering.
I ended up picking up a spare power steering pump from a local salvage yard. I’m pretty sure there was an issue with the pressure relief valve, but since the valves come in multiple size variations I ended up just swapping the new seals into the used pump. Jackpot. We have power steering again.
When I disassembled the front end, I noticed the front left caliper was indeed dragging again, so I bit the bullet and had Lithia send one out with the rag joint. Not cheap, but then neither is fuel mileage hit from driving around with my brakes on either.
Now lets just hope the batteries are okay after being drained during the repairs.
