Power-steering and you...

[BEANFro Elite]

Greetings friends, we all like the freedom of the open road, driving at speed, negotiating corners with ease, cornering is made easier thanks to... POWER-STEERING!

Lol, on a more serious note, as some of you may know, I have a 1.6 litre 1999 Ford focus and after 11long years, it is still going strong save for a some minor niggles.

However, unknown to me, when I bought the beauty, it had a minor leak in the rack which after nearly nine months of my ownership has progressively gotten worse so now I'm having to top-up the fluid every few days whereas it used to be around every three weeks.

I've called up several garages who have all just arsed about and fobbed me off with the usual "I'll ring you back for a price" and this kinda needs to be resolved as soon as possible, so being on the savvy side of car mechanics and maintainance I've decided that I'm going to do it myself, as I'm sick of getting the impression that I'm talking to brick walls.

having studied a lot of diagrams and assembly/disassembly guides, and extensive chats with a few mechanics, I feel very confident undertaking this task.

Naturally, after the job is accomplished, I'm going to get the wheels alligned etc.

I was wondering if anyone has undertaken this level of car DIY-age, how did it go, was it worth the trouble?

[BEANFro Elite]

Well, seeing how this thread is such a roaring success, lol, I'm going to document what I've learnt needs to be done, in a few hours, I'm going to be uploading some photos of the job.



Circled in the photo on the left, are the signs of the leakage, as you can see leakage on the rubber gaiter on the steering rack as well as on the suspension wishbone.

Pictured on the right, this bolt, circled needs to be unscrewed from inside the car, its located on the driver's side, just a little behind the pedals, this will prevent mis-allignment of the steering wheel column.



Pictured on the left-hand side, is the power-steering fluid resevoir and the low pressure hose, arrowed below the resevoir.

The low pressure hose must be unclipped at the top of the power-steering pump, pictured on the right-hand side, be sure that you also disconnect the high-pressure hose from the bottom of the pump (not pictured, but the hose is arrowed, as there was not enough room to position the camera for a good enough photo), ensure that before you disconnect any of the hoses, that you position a drip pan beneath your car and that you cover the engine timing belt with a cloth.

I imagine given the amount of views that some of you may be watching this with a quiet interest, so if at least this thread will be on Hexus, for someone else to refer to at another point in the future

[peterb]

Missed this first time round, but I would have said that with hydraulic systems, cleanliness is paramount, and as it sounds as if a seal has failed, fitting the replacement needs to be done with care to avoid damaging the lip, and finally, that the hardest part will probably be the dismantling of the surrounding assemblies to get access to the rack itself.

But since it sounds as if you have done it...

(I had to replace the heater matrix on a peugot 405 years ago. Replacing the matrix itself took about 30 minutes. Dismantling, removing and then replacing all of the facia took about 6 hours - I should have used radweld!)

[alpha channel]

Does replacing an engine count?

[BEANFro Elite]

Well, its not really the same thing, as an engine replacement jobbie requires lots of additional specialist equipment etc.

Moving on, I had a little bit of trouble seperating the power steering arm from the wheel assembly, went through a load of allen keys.

Haven't managed to finish the job yet as I had a big arse headache unscrewing the two mounting bolts that secure the rack to the front cross-member, as you can see in the two pics below.

Driver-side bolt --> Passenger-side bolt -->

I've arrowed the heat wraping which I'm looking forward to removing from the rack tomorrow as it has those weird starshaped screwheads, for god's sake. >.<

In the morning, I'm going to disconnect the anti-roll bar assembly arm to allow access for removal and fitting of the old and new racks.

But alas, tomorrow will be a better day should be done in 5 - 6 hours, lol

[GoNz0]

i did my bmw 3 series rack last year with the brother in law, thank fork for having the use of a car lift and air tools !!

it was still an utter bitch to do mind you, as you say getting the rack from the stearing arm is sheer hell!

when you have it all done you really need to align it pre road trip, its easy to do with 2 people and a length of string

simply tie the string round the back wheel and pull it from the center of the rear wheel all the way to the front and you want the string touching the front and rear of the front tyre, repeat over and over on each side making sure you roll the card forward and back each time to settle things in.

that way you have a reasonable straight ahead track so you get minimal wear on the drive to the tracking center

[BEANFro Elite]

i did my bmw 3 series rack last year with the brother in law, thank fork for having the use of a car lift and air tools !!

it was still an utter bitch to do mind you, as you say getting the rack from the stearing arm is sheer hell!

when you have it all done you really need to align it pre road trip, its easy to do with 2 people and a length of string

simply tie the string round the back wheel and pull it from the center of the rear wheel all the way to the front and you want the string touching the front and rear of the front tyre, repeat over and over on each side making sure you roll the card forward and back each time to settle things in.

that way you have a reasonable straight ahead track so you get minimal wear on the drive to the tracking center

Hm, good idea, never knew about that, will do, its gona be a long slog to the finish line as I'll going it alone until at least 11am, I'm going to resume work at 9am.

[GoNz0]

while your down there check the drop links on the roll bar, if they are not stiff change them while your at it as its an easy job while your under the car. if you feel brave do the wishbones as well

[peterb]

<---snip

I've arrowed the heat wraping which I'm looking forward to removing from the rack tomorrow as it has those weird starshaped screwheads, for god's sake. >.<

snip--->

Do you mean Torx head? I used to think the same, but yoiu do get good torque transfer to them with less brisk of damaging the heads if you use the right driver. I bought a set from Halfords to go with my socket set. Much better grip than allen key heads too, especially with the smaller sizes.

[BEANFro Elite]

Do you mean Torx head? I used to think the same, but yoiu do get good torque transfer to them with less brisk of damaging the heads if you use the right driver. I bought a set from Halfords to go with my socket set. Much better grip than allen key heads too, especially with the smaller sizes.

Yar, thats the one, I'm going to invest in a set for my toolbag and all

[BEANFro Elite]

Job done, just got to re-attach the heat shield to the rack, in total, I've spent about 14 hours, which isn't bad considering I've been using manual tools etc.

[alpha channel]

Well to be fair I did have to do the power steering as well (and no specialist tools were used just a strong roof joist in the garage so we could lower the engine on to the floor and haul up the car so we could slide the engine out).

[BEANFro Elite]

I had no such luxury, job was done on a slope, with two jacks and a pair of bricks chocking the rear wheels, as well as plain old fashioned hand tools and loads of elbow grease.

[Rave]

My Mondeo rack is leaking. Gonna drive it over one of the pits at work and have a look. I might just bung one of the engineers some money to sort it for me if it involves 14 hours of work. How much was the new rack?

[BEANFro Elite]

My Mondeo rack is leaking. Gonna drive it over one of the pits at work and have a look. I might just bung one of the engineers some money to sort it for me if it involves 14 hours of work. How much was the new rack?

I got mine from Eurocar Parts for about £300 on an exchange basis so you get about £150 back when you return the old rack and by the way, most of the work is done on top of the car, you need to bleed the old fluid out of the system as well.

You'll also need to remove the wheels so that pit is going to be a little bit redundant.

It only took me 14 hours because I was using only manual tools, and was working on my own for the majority of the time, I also to begin with didn't really know what I was doing, lol, don't know if the mondeo has anti-roll bars or not if not then that'll make things A LOT easier for you

[GoNz0]

You'll also need to remove the wheels so that pit is going to be a little bit redundant.

to be fair most pits have a slide along jack for that reason

over a pit /on a ramp you can cut the time to 4 hours, and that was a damn 3 series BMW that are not easy to work on, air tools are a godsend