Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting Power Steering Cooler Replacement

I have a hose that is leaking power steering fluid. The hose is the return hose to the resevoir. It runs straight down the firewall to the bottom of the car, where it changes to metal (looks like a brake line). The crimp where is goes from rubber to metal looks to be rusted, and is leaking.

I tried to band-aid it by using a couple hose clamps on the junction, but that didn't help any. I also put a tablespoon of stop-leak in there, but that didn't seem to help much (probably will do more harm than good in the long run). I was trying to avoid replacing the whole ball of wax.

Ford won't sell just that hose. They want to sell the hose to the cooler, the cooler, and the return hose to the resevoir all as one. *shrug* I figure it wouldn't be a bad idea to replace them all.

My question is... Has anyone ever attempted this, or know how involved it might be. The lines are routed on top of the frame, and are pretty inaccessible. It's going to be a bear, but wondering if it is doable.

Thanks for the input.

I have had experience on a '90 Buick Century, not familiar with routing of hoses/cooler on my current cars.
Cutting pipe at leaking fitting and installing longer hose over the pipe and then to reservoir would be the cheap way to go, however you would have to have good match of new hose I.D. and pipe O.D. and probably double clamp to ensure no future leakage.
In my case I was dealing with damaged pipe. While I was successful, if I had to do it again I would have had dealer install new hose/pipe assembly since you require hoist (12" off of driveway doesn't do it) and the assembly was reasonably priced.
If the stop-leak was the stuff for coolant systems then I think you should drain and refill p/s fluid.

It does look like it will be a nasty job. Mostly because the line isn't flexible, so re-routing it will really suq.

The stop-leak is for automatic transmissions. Since the fuild is Mobil 1 ATF, I figured it'd be the stuff to use, only in smaller amounts. I ran about 3 different searches when trying to diagnose this problem, and that 'fix' came up a couple times, so i thought I would give it a whirl. It may yet work, as it takes a while for it to take hold, but I am not really holding my breath, and it seems a chincy way to solve the problem.

Well you may be OK leaving the TX stop-leak in, however, I believe that stuff works by swelling gaskets which isn't really your problem.
Squeezing the crimp a little with pliers may do the trick since I believe your problem is in the low pressure (i.e. return) side of the p/s system.

Mark...check PM's