Just a heads up to people. I just flushed my power steering fluid clean. To give you an idea of the difference. The original, 14 year old fluid looked like oil, had the consistancy of of water and stunk. Yeah, fluid rarely smells good, but this fluid just smelled badly used and awful. I put it in a small clear plastic coke bottle. From the outside, minus the residual smell, it LOOKED like coke and woulda fooled you based on looks alone.

On the other hand, the new fluid smelled decent, was a nice bright red/pinkish/purplish color and had the proper consistancy. I put a lil bit of new and old fluid in 2 seperate cups and showed a few people who were completely shocked and disgusted wondering if their fluid was as bad.

If you haven't changed you fluid since the GM factory techs installed it, you might want to now. I can't imagine that this stuff was doing much of anything for the PS unit except keeping it from blowing up on me. Go on, check yours out. Take a small bit of the old on a smooth surface and put a few drops of the new fluid next to the old fluid. Now ask yourself if you want that old stuff lubricating your system, lol.

It's not really hard to do. You can do like I did, and just buy a siphon device, drain the old out, fill, drive, drain again, fill, drive, drain again, fill and drive. That ought to get it back to a more presentable state. Some people disconnect hoses and that's a better way in my opinion, but if I'm gonna disconnect those old hoses I'm gonna replace them. That'll come later on.

The same goes for your brake fluid, and your rear end gear fluid.

 

mmmmmm...fresh fluid

 

I'm actually leaking fluid ... noticed it pretty much right away.. but haven't gotten to fix it yet

How did I find out ? .. When installing swaybar bushings and TDS wonderbar .... noticed one side was nice and shiny slimy oily shiny .. *lol*

Fittings ? Would be a probable cause ?

 

Best bet is to hose it off with cleaner before you go tearing anything out. It could be anything down there from reservoir/pump seals, the ps filler cap, high pressure or low pressure hose or worst case scenario, the steering gear box itself. There it could be the access plate on top of the box, pitman arm area or something in between. I'd initially guess and hope for one or both hoses leaking. If so, replace em both, no need to do one and the othr starts leaking a month down the road. If it's the pump itself, that's easy as pie and safer to replace the whole unit instead of just new seals. If it is the pump, you might consider replacing the 2 hoses anyway, same reason as above. If it's the box, I can't help you there, I've got zero experience dealing with those.

I just did my wonderbar this weekend as well. Same brand as yours. GM crossthreaded one of the bracket bolts, however, since it was done most likely by their robotic air guns they did an excellent job of it. Bolt was in there tight as could be and the new one went in and torqued down nicely. Unless the machining didn't completely clean the filings out of the original hole and that's why it looked cross threaded. Either way it went on nicely, even nicer when I used an extendable ratchet. I was killing myself with the normal 3/8 ratchet I use, no leverage. I got the extendable out and every bolt came off like I had an air gun, lol. Also, it was dry as the sun down there luckily, no leaks.

Anyway, since you have a leak, you'll have nice shint new fluid in there soon. Consider it a forced maintenance item, lol. Definately hose it down again with cleaner when you're done fixing it to clean it up.

 

My PS uses a constant loss system, so the fluid is nice and clean Main culprits are the hose inlet/outlet on the box.

 

Ever wonder why your power steering fluid resevoir looks dirty? Hard driving and a less than spectacular cap = small amounts of spilled fluid on a fairly regular basis. I top mine up every few months. And there aren't leaks anywhere else.