Squealing Hard Steering Diagnosing Low Power Steering Fluid and Wrong Fluids

What the heck is that noise? Something's always going on with this car. You guys hear that noise? In this video, I wanna talk to you about power steering, more specifically, hydraulic power steering. What's the purpose of power steering? Of course the power steering is gonna be the most helpful for you when the vehicle isn't actually moving. So you're sitting in a parking spot or something of the like, essentially the car is not moving, you try to turn the wheel, if you don't have power assist, it's gonna be hard to turn that wheel. If you have power assist, you can pretty much just do it with one hand. A lot of classic cars like this one right here didn't even come with power steering. This one, in particular, did have it as an option and it's actually got it. The cars that didn't have power steering, people would happen to notice that they had a hard time trying to steer it, especially at low or slow speeds. Where is it?

I got to tell you, even on some modern-day vehicles, you might actually find that you don't even have a hydraulic power steering system. On this particular one, it actually has electronic assist. So like I said, this video is mostly gonna be about hydraulic power steering, which is what this particular car actually has. Now, before we go ahead and start torture-testing a power steering system, I kind of wanna talk about the hydraulic pump itself. Now, looking at the outside of it, you're gonna be able to see that you have the polyene and, of course, this is where your serpentine belt is gonna ride and it's gonna be powered by the power of the engine. You're gonna have an inlet and an outlet. That's, of course, where the fluid's gonna come in and it's gonna go ahead and go out after it's been pressurized. Now let's take a look at what's going on inside of this pump.

Now with this apart, you can see exactly what's going on inside of the power steering pump. As the serpentine belt is supposed to be spinning this right here, it's gonna be opening up these little vanes right here. That's what these little lines are called. Essentially, they should just kind of fall in and hit up against this cam ring right here. As it's spinning around, it's gonna create pressure inside all these smaller areas and then release it into one of the larger areas, which, of course, is gonna have the pressure leading down to your power steering line. Let's continue with our disassembly starting by removing all these little vanes right here. If you were to look at them, you can tell that they're a perfectly machined piece of metal. I'm just gonna go ahead and remove all these.

All right. And now we're gonna move along to removing our cam ring. That's this right along here. Looking inside this, you can see that it's not a perfect circle. It's actually oblonged a little bit. The next thing that we're gonna remove is the rotor. That's this area right here. Typically, there's gonna be a snap ring that's located right there and essentially it's just gonna make it so this can actually pull out of here and it's also gonna make sure that this pulley can slide out from the front. I've already removed it, and so I'll just go ahead and grab onto this. Slide it up and out of there. Underneath that, you're gonna be able to find your pressure plate. That's located right under here. Let's go ahead and grab on to that.

Now this pressure plate right here is, of course, gonna have some gaskets along the backside of it. Those are gonna be super important because, of course, if these are leaking, you're not gonna be able to build up pressure inside of your steering system. So that's the internal seals there. Now we can just go ahead and lift this up. We're gonna slide this out of here and that exposes the external seal. This seal right here, I would consider more of a dust seal. Essentially, while this is on your actual car itself and it's spinning, it's gonna prevent any dirt or debris from making its way inside of the pump. If for some reason you see fluid coming out of this area right here, that doesn't necessarily mean that this seal right here is necessarily the only one that's bad. Of course, if you had an issue with the seals on the inside there from the pressure plate, that's where the fluid's actually gonna be coming through from. Now, what kind of damage could happen inside of this pump if for some reason you had contaminated fluids such as maybe it was dirty or somebody mixed in fluids that just weren't copacetic, or even if the fluid was low and you kind of got a lot of air mixing in with the fluid?

Let's have a look inside here, of course. As we look at this, we can see where our pressure plate is. This generally will have a couple little scrapes on it and that's because as this is spinning around, it's technically scraping up against it. And that's due to the fact that it's not being lubricated properly. Of course, along these vanes right here, a lot of times you're gonna be able to see that there's some issues coming along this area here and then, of course, right along the cam itself where those vanes are supposed to hit up against. If for some reason there wasn't the proper fluid in there or there was dirt or debris of any sort, of course, it's gonna be scraping along here instead of moving along it copacetically.

Looking at this right here, you can tell exactly where all that debris that you were just looking at was rubbing into. It's all ground up. I could see a whole bunch of record lines in this and that's no good overall. Also, you have this side right along here on the back cover. That's where the other end of that rotor is gonna be rubbing on. You can see that there isn't as much lines on this one, but there was definitely something going on inside of this pump that shouldn't have been happening. Now, if when you're driving your vehicle you happen to find that you have intermittent loss of your power assist, typically that comes down to a few different things. You might have low fluids, so, of course, the system's kind of sucking in a little bit of air mixing with the fluid causing air bubbles. You might have contaminated fluid which essentially might mean that you have debris inside there or even different types of fluids that just don't mix.

Other than that, inside the pump, you have those vanes that I showed you. If for some reason, those are binding and they aren't necessarily moving the way that they should, of course, you're gonna have areas where the actual pressure inside the pump isn't the same all the way around. So you might have an area that has high pressure and then if the vane doesn't open as it comes around the next time around, it might have low pressure in that area. And, of course, if you happen to lose all of your power assist from your power steering system, generally that means that you have either minimal or no fluid inside of your power steering system. There's nothing too pressurized to get led down to that power steering rack, to be able to help you out while you're turning. If that's the case, either, like I said, you have low fluid or maybe even the internal parts of your power steering pump just aren't functioning properly.

So now we all know how our cars are supposed to feel when the power steering pump's working properly. You can go ahead and you can turn in any direction, you're not gonna hear any whine, and, of course, you're gonna have the assist that you feel like you need. Now, with the power steering system full of hydraulic fluid, we're gonna go ahead and test to see exactly how much pressure it takes to go ahead and turn the steering wheel. Well, it looks like I'm at approximately 30-inch pounds, maybe a little less, depending on how hard I'm trying to turn it. And that's where they are functioning properly. So now we're gonna start wreaking some havoc on this power steering system right here. Of course, I wanna locate the power steering reservoir. I'm gonna go ahead and open this up and take a look at some dark fluid. Let's go ahead and suck some of this out of here so we can have a look at it. Let's take a little sample of that right in our cup.

Wow. We'll look at that as it's swirling. Ooh, that even smells funky. Let's see what else we can get out of this thing. Not to mention, this fluid right here is supposed to look a lot more like this. Keep in mind, every manufacturer has its own recommendations for power steering fluid. Now, what you noticed in that shot was even though I went ahead and I sucked out as much of the fluid from this reservoir right here, it really didn't change very much. I didn't hear an audible difference and honestly, when I got inside, I tested to see how much pressure it took to go ahead and turn that steering wheel, and nothing changed at all. The reason why that is, of course, is because this reservoir right here is located separately from the actual power steering pump itself. It's up nice and high, so there's actually still plenty of fluid inside the system. It's just not all the way up here. So what I'm getting to is if you have the type of power steering pump that actually has the reservoir mounted directly to the pump, typically if the fluid's low on that, you're gonna hear a whining noise. With that said, let's go ahead and drain out the rest of this fluid.

Okay. So at this point, we went ahead and we drained out the majority of the fluid that's in the system. Of course, I don't hear any noise. Why is that? Because there isn't any fluid mixing with air circulating in the system. This thing is really hard to turn. Let's test it. As you can imagine, that's probably no fun for anyone. Now, trying to turn the steering wheel while I'm not moving at all is a little difficult but once the car starts moving a little bit faster, I can kind of do it with one hand, but you got to try a little bit. With the car moving, let's go ahead and see how much pressure this takes. I'm looking at about 100. What is going on? All right. Let's see what's going on. Oh. My reservoir is empty. Great. Do I have anything in here? I got nothing in here. Oh. All right. I'll try it. Whatever gets me off the side of the road. All right. That's about all of that. Let's see if it's any better. Well, it feels a little better. It doesn't sound much better. It definitely feels a little easier to turn. Let's test it. Oh, yeah. That's a lot better. Obviously using water in the system isn't necessarily the best idea. It is temporarily working, but obviously, the damage that I could have potentially done by adding a little bit of water to the actual power steering system could be very bad.

So now we tried the water. Let's try something different. Let's go with brake fluid. Let's try that. All right. That doesn't feel too bad, actually. Not bad at all. No hands. Just kidding. Well, it feels like we lost our steering now. It just cut right out on me. Yeah. Let's see what we got then. Well, let me turn it on first. Ha-ha. Yeah. All right. That's hard to turn. Let's reset it here. Okay. I'm gonna accelerate a little bit. Whoa. Okay. I'm not accelerating. Back to the 300 again. Great. Okay. So we went ahead and we tried some brake fluid in the system. As you can tell, the reservoir is still filled to the max, but for some reason, even though it seemed as though we had power steering in the beginning, after a little while of driving it, it cut out on me. As soon as I stopped, especially, I tried checking the torque to see exactly how much pressure it took to go ahead and turn that steering wheel, with the car idling sitting still, it took a lot of torque to make that steering wheel turn. When I tried to accelerate a little bit, the pump kind of circulated the fluid a little bit quicker for me and it got a little bit easier.

Now let's move along to trying something more common that you might have in your car, some engine oil. I don't see why this shouldn't work. It's pro-level and, of course, it's got anti-wear additives. Let's give this a try. I can tell already this isn't hard to turn. Here we go. No, it's not working. It's not good. Got a little acceleration under our belt. Starts to turn a little easier. Okay. Well, my check engine light came on. I wonder what that's about. Got to turn it a little easier now, let's go ahead and test it. Let's test it with the oil. It's not too bad once it actually were in there. Okay. So after I gave it a couple of good revs, it seemed like it loosened up and now that I'm sitting here for a minute again, it definitely got tighter. What could that possibly mean? Obviously, if the fluid isn't circulating around inside of the power steering system, it's going to cause an issue or, of course, maybe there's a little bit of air trapped in there. Okay. So this is what's coming out of the system after we tried using some oil, some brake fluid, and, of course, some water. This doesn't look very good at all. Okay. So we tried the oil and well, it kind of worked, but it kind of didn't and it really isn't probably the best thing.

So something else that I wanted to talk to you about might be maybe you're driving around in your car and you feel as though you have power assist steering but it just doesn't feel like it's helping out as much as it used to. Maybe the steering is getting a little bit weak overall. So you might head on down to a parts store and get yourself something that's a little bit thicker, like an additive of some sort and, of course, what you wanna try to do is help build up some of that pressure. So let's go ahead and add some of that to the system right here. That's thick. Drive it around a little bit here, see how it goes. All right. So now that we've driven it around a little bit, the steering feels a little bit better. Let's go ahead and do the torque test on this. Yeah. That doesn't feel too bad. It's just a little noisy. Let's come over and do some figure eights again.

Okay. So now it's time for another experiment. This one's gonna be mixing fluids that you might be tempted to go ahead and put into your power steering system. For this one right here, we have some regular power steering fluid in these two right here. That one is the original power steering fluid that was in this. This one over here is the fluid that's supposed to be in this particular Toyota and this is regular old ATF. Now, for this one right here, let's go ahead and add in a little bit of 10W-30 motor oil. I wanna see what this does. And this one right here, let's go ahead and use a little bit of heavy-duty engine oil stabilizer. Let's continue with the stabilizer in this one right here, because, of course, if you had a leak or you thought you had an issue with your power steering, you might be tempted to use this. And then this one over here, I don't know why not. Let's use a little bit of brake fluid. This one we're gonna use a little bit more of that ATF or transmission fluid, a little splash of brake fluid. Maybe that's what you got sitting in your car. And then commonly people might have a bottle of water. So let's go ahead and add some of that too. All right. I'm gonna go ahead and whip this up. Like I said, we have the pump already apart right here. And, of course, the power steering pump isn't necessarily something that we're gonna be able to see the inside of. So I wanna just go ahead and do it this way.

All right. So what did we accomplish with this little experiment of ours? If you were to look at everything, you can kind of see that some fluids mix better than others. Other fluids, well, they really don't mix well at all. Basically, what's the purpose of this test? Of course, it's to see what exactly can potentially happen but also so that we kind of know it's not really a good idea to mix any type of fluids inside of your power steering system. So not only could potentially having mixed fluids inside of your steering system cause a little bit of a noise or a little bit of a whine, but also if the fluid itself is a little bit low and the air starts mixing in, that's gonna cause everything to get aerated and, of course, you're gonna start hearing that whining noise. Just to mention, if you did happen to add something to your power steering because you were trying to get off the side of the road and you want to be as safe as possible, by the time you get back to your house, you're gonna have to make sure that you completely flush out that power steering system. You wanna make sure that you get out any of the existing fluid that might be inside there that might potentially be contaminated, whether it's by a different type of fluid or anything else that made its way in.

Okay, friends. So we're pretty much ready to let you get out of here, but real quick, I wanna summarize what we went over in the video. Of course, having used fluid inside the power steering system probably isn't the best idea, especially if you've gone 200,000 and something miles like what's on this particular car, obviously leaving it in there and not taking care of it could potentially damage the power steering system. Not to mention, you don't necessarily wanna just go ahead and add anything to the power steering system. By adding things, you could potentially cause more damage than just leaving the original fluid in there.

Other than that, if you hear a little bit of a whine coming from your steering system, typically it's gonna be because your fluid's low, it's low on pressure, or possibly the pump itself is no good. Okay, friends. So I hope you liked the video. I hope you learned a little something. If you did and you wanna talk about it, leave it in the comments section below because I always love to hear from you. Of course, if you liked the video or loved the video, smash on the like button for me. It would mean the world. While you're at it, go ahead and subscribe, ring the bell. That way there, you can be kept up with all of our latest content. Now I need to get to work putting this thing back together. Oh, boy. Now what? Yeah. That's probably safe. Let's get out of here. Perfect.