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Old 07 Jan 2008, 08:46 am
honda guy honda guy is offline
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You have two separate issues with your power steering. The squeeking and the sluggish steering is probably from the power steering belt slipping. The belt can be slipping for one of two reasons: the first is that its loose and the second is that it is wet with fluid. My guess is the reason its slipping is that its saturated with the oil that came out of the pump reservoir. You will have to replace the belt to fix that as the oil won't come out of the belt once its gotten on there.the foaming fluid is because air is getting sucked into the power steering pump and the fluid is getting whipped up into a foam (think of the barrista at Starbucks injecting steam into the milk for a latte and you'll get the idea). Again, there are two things that can cause the foaming. The first is that the reservoir was overfilled. If you put too much fluid in then the fluid will be churned up and when it expands from heat absorption it has no place to go but out. So if someone simply added too much fluid then you'll just need to correct the fluid level, bleed the air out and change your belt and you'll be good to go. The other cause of the problem is that your power steering pump is sucking the air in from somewhere it shouldn't. that somewhere is probably through a leaking low pressure hose from the rack to the reservoir or from the reservoir to the pump or from a clamp on the low pressure hoses that is loose. If this is the case, you'll ahve to find where the air is getting pulled in and either replace the low pressure hose or the clamp to stop the foaming.once you do fix the leak you'll have to bleed out the air that has gotten into the power steering system. refill the reservoir with fluid to the correct level and then turn the wheel slowly to full left then all the way to full right and back to full left about three times and that will bleed the air out.hope that answers your question
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