New Power Steering...

[87grandmarquis]

Last week Wednesday, I saw fluid under the car and the power steering fluid was a bit low. I thought it was probably just a loose fitting from when the power steering pump was replaced at the end of April. After a little bit of hunting, the source of the leak turns out to be the power steering gearbox. The gasket around the gear that connects to the Pitman Arm was leaking like crazy. My mechanic was busy until Tuesday (yesterday), so I let the car sit in the driveway over the weekend.

Thankfully I found a remanufactured gearbox for cheaper than my mechanic would have charged (he gets all his parts from NAPA, CarQuest had it $40 cheaper). That's the good news. The bad news is that the rag joint (where the steering column connects to the gearbox) is separating, and now that needs to be replaced!

So now for this job I'm already up to $140 in parts... So figure about $50 more for the rag joint, $100 labor... $290 for this job. Plus the pump, thats $530 that I've put into the car since I bought it in January... And I only paid $700 for it!

At first, I was mad at my car for breaking. But I can't stay mad at my car for more than a few seconds. I love it too much to be mad at it. A few hundred bucks is pennies compared to the satisfaction I get out of driving my Merc!

[Lincolnmania]

you gotta expect these problems with a car that is quickly approaching 20 yrs old. if this were some other car (cough cough ford windstar/taurus/sable/continental) the steering gear would have been replaced at least twice already..............shame you already got the reman steering box, the 98-02 police cars have a steering box with a quicker ratio
anyway hang in there, and remember that you are still ahead of the game.......you could have spent thousands more on a used car
scott

[87grandmarquis]

The 98-02 PI gearbox fits right in? Hmmm... If I ever find one at junkyard I might grab it.

But it's true that even for the ~$1230 I've spent total on the car + repairs, I still wouldn't be able to find a car with 60,000 miles on it in better shape than mine.

[Paul_]

shifty's power steering was fuckin up before she went off the road, so i'll just throw in a new pump and a pi steering box

[gadget73]

Let me know how that PI swap goes. I'm gonna need a new box before too long here and I'd like to do the swap if it fits. Read somewhere that the input shafts are different, but no mention of if one could make a bastard coupler with half of the original U joint and half of a new one. I'm half tempted to yank one in a junkyard and test fit it.