How to Replace Power Steering Cooler Dodge RAM 1500

Hey, friends. It's Len here from 1A Auto. Today, we're going to be working on our 1996 Dodge Ram 1500. I want to show you something super simple, removing and reinstalling a power steering cooler. It's super easy. I can do it, and you can do it too. As always, if you need any parts, you can check us out 1aauto.com. Thanks.

Okay, friends. We're underneath the vehicle. We found where our power steering cooler is. We have our power steering lines that lead right to it, so we're just going to disconnect these claps. Whatever size takes off the clamp for you is the one you're going to use. For me, it's a quarter inch. Sometimes they're eight millimeters, sometimes they're seven millimeter. I've even seen them five millimeter, which is weird, but let's slide that awesome. Just grab your hose, and see if you can get it to break free.

This one does not want to break free. You can use something as simple as a pocket screwdriver. Just go right along here. If you have some penetrant spray, you could try to spray it in there. That'll probably be helpful to your cause. I'm going to grab some of that real quick. It's going to go right around the hose here. Let's see if I can get the penetrant to work its way in, do its job for me. Once it does its job I can do mine, and then we'll all be much happier.

Just a little curve to pick right here. It works very well. You just want to be careful not to poke any holes in the hose, of course, so when you go you just bring the pointy end along the metal, not out like this. Just right along the metal. There we are. We just need this to break free here. There we go. Let's move on now.

So as I twist, I'm just tugging at the same time. The fluid is going to come out, so you need to make sure you have your collection bucket. And here we are, just let it drain into there. It might be a lot, it might be a little. I don't know. We're going to take off this hose, and we're going to do the same thing. Let's see if it's stuck. This one I can twist, it's much newer. Here we are. Both hoses are off.

We're going to remove the mounting bolt, which is right here. It's a 13 millimeter head. I'm just going to pull this hose up and out of the way here. Plenty of fluid running out here. Here we are. Let's get our mounting bolt out of there at some point, but anyway, that's our power steering cooler right there. Super easy to take out as you saw: a couple of hoses, one mounting bolt, easy peasy.

Okay, so it's time to install our cooler. We've got our mounting bolt, we've got the cooler, of course. Whether it's old or new, it's going to go right up in here. We're going to take our mounting bolt, insert it right into this hole, right where we took it out of. 13 millimeter, and it's snuck here. There he is. So now that it's bottomed out, we're just going to go a little bit more.

That's it. Get our socket off of here, give it a nice wiggle. That feels pretty great. Now, we're clear to put on our power steering hoses. We're going to take the return hose here, right up onto there. Give a little wiggle, slide it right on. You want to get it so it's as close to bottom down on there as possible, if not touching. Sometimes it's super hard to get it all the way down. Here we are.

It's pretty good. Grab my ratchet, it's going to snug this up. I'm going to make sure that the clamp is in the same spot that it was originally. Okay, that's pretty much bottomed out. I'm just going to give it a teeny bit more, and give it a nice twist. It's not going anywhere. I love it. Let's move along.

Grab this other hose. I'm just going to put it right on here in a nice push. That one bottomed right out. Get our clamp on there, slide it. You'll notice that I didn't put the clamp all the way down at the end. You want to leave just a little bit of hose down at the end there, but make sure that you still have plenty of metal going through. The metal on this comes all the way up to pretty much where my thumb ends, so I'd say that we're pretty good. We're going to be clamping on the metal. A nice tug, that feels really great. Awesome. I love it. These look good. They're nice and tight. I'd say we're clear to move on to the next step.

So now we're just going to add a little bit of power steering fluid here. This is an older vehicle, so it's not really as picky about power steering fluids as a lot of the newer vehicles. So with this fluid, if you wanted to, you can go ahead and add power steering fluid, or you can add some ETF if you didn't have access to power steering, but you have transmission fluid laying around. The truck's not going to mind. It's still going to do its job, and it's going to be super happy as long as it's lubricated, and it's got plenty of fluid in there to the point that the pump isn't going to be turning air in with the fluid. You should be all set.

We just added some fluid. Now, what you're going to do is you're going to run the vehicle, let it burp out all its air that's inside the steering system there. Then you're going to check your fluid level. When you check your fluid level, you can tell on the little dipstick here. We've got an add line, which has a little arrow down to here. You have a hotline, which is the maximum line when it's hot, up there. Once your vehicle is hot, you don't want your fluid anywhere up past that hot line. If the vehicle's hot and it's anywhere down here, well, of course, you're going to have to add some. But if it's anywhere in between the add and the hot, will say the word add, and the hot when it's hot. You're doing it right.

So just keep topping it off until you get to that point, and then take her for a nice road test, and down the road you go. Easy peasy.

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