psiegel

It's a loud clacking, metal sound and the steering wheel is beginning to shake when turned hard to one side or the other. I can feel the hard vibration on the steering pump. This came on all of a sudden tonight. I assume its the belt or pump itself. Is there any way to tell which one it is before it comes apart and are there any descent solutions. By the way, the steering fluid level is fine.
Thanks in advance.
Peter

psiegel

oops i need to spell check that Coming not comming.

tbennett017

Did you check your fluid level?

psiegel

yes, its fine

springer3

Hopefully you just need to replace a belt that is partly shreaded and beating on the housing. Remove the right rear wheel, and remove the secondary muffler. The belt is behind the flat cover of the PS drive housing.

If the belt looks fine, the problem is internal to the pump, and you probably have debris in the fluid.

Either way, I would not drive the car until the belt was taken off.

psiegel

ok, that sounds about right. If in fact debris is in the fluid how successful can you be in removing the debris with a good flush or two? I assume that there could be a possibility that i may need to take all the components apart to clean.

springer3

Getting the PS rack out is DIY-possible, but no picnic. Hopefully any debris is in the lines. You should have no problem disconnecting the lines at the front and rear of the car, and blowing through them to see how much debris possibly reached the rack. I would be surprised if there were not coarse strainers inside the rack to keep the big stuff out.

Have you inspected the belt yet?

DAVISRILEY

Couple other things to check are the three bolts at the front of the pump, the pump itself, and the bolt securing the gear to the end of the cam. Check the pump by wiggling it back and forth, and the pulley can only be checked when you take the cover off to check the belt, which is when you could check the lower bolt. I imagine that any of them coming loose could cause some noise.

psiegel

Springer, you were right on target. It was the belt. It only had about 25% of the teeth left on the belt. It drives great now with a new belt. I can tell that i must have been loosing teeth for a while because the car hasn't driven this smoothly in a while. Not even any groaning anymore at extreme ends of the turning radius.
Thanks for the help
Peter

springer3

You are welcome. It is always nice to see a happy ending.

DAVISRILEY

Glad to see it was a fairly easy resolution, though that belt is a pain to get to.