Ah yes the learning curve....................if pump is good there is NO need to rebuild it. If bad you cannot restore what needs restoring anyway. And yes I have rebuilt them before. Get the parts back together with any variation from before and kiss it goodbye, the actual pumping section must go back EXACTLY as before...........................any front rear variation in location will make noise, there is often one plate in there that can easily be flipped backwards with no indicator because metal is so hard there will be no wear to show which way it goes. You'll know though again by the noise.........
Have rebuilt racks too, the driver side inner seal is an utter b---- to change without damaging the unit, rebuilders use very special one-off tools to do that part of the job.
In short, do the easiest thing. Nobody EVER does maintenance on power steering, they only cry when they spit their guts out. You can pretty much stop it by doing something the factory is clueless about, or change the fluid. I do a complete fluid change maybe every 60-70K miles or so and since starting have never had to change anything to do with the system on any one of like 10 cars now, the cars go to the scrapyard with still well running quiet power steering.
To do? Jack wheels up in air, loosen return somewhere easy to get to, pull it off and while draining quickly get in car, start it and very fast run rack from one limit to other. Don't hit limits hard. Idea to empty as much fluid as possible QUICK without damaging unit. Do NOT let it run on empty meaning shutdown as quick as possible. Pump will gall up pumping section if allowed to run truly dry. Fill fluid back up and expect some bubble/aeration, allow that to settle out for an hour and come back and recheck fluid level again, refill if necessary.
Plan for a big mess, that fluid will dump all virtually instantly.
