- This is the kind of
stuff that can go wrong when you try to do it yourself. This is some stuff I would
joke about happening. I thought I was being careful,
thought I was being gentle. And now I'm living it and I don't like it. Ahh! (growls) This sucks. The Miata's power
steering has been leaking and leaving puddles all
over my driveway, exhibit A. So, we've basically got two
options to fix this thing. I could replace it, which
would cost me about 200 bucks, although it would only take a couple hours and it would definitely work. Or I could take this old nasty one out, blow it apart and try to
fix whatever's leaking. And that would only cost me about $30, although it is gonna take
probably three, four, five, six hours, I don't know. And I could screw it up. So, guess which one we're gonna do? We're gonna take a crack at rebuilding this power steering rack. And along the way, we'll talk
about how power steering works and why sometimes fixing
stuff like this yourself is worth it, and why sometimes
it definitely totally is not. And I don't know which
way today's gonna go. I'm Zach and this is Money Pit. Let's get dirty. (bomb exploding) (thunder crashing) Okay, so we've got the
power steering rack out and it was pretty easy. All we had to do was
disconnect the inner tie rods from the outer tie rods. We disconnected the steering shaft from the steering input
here, and the fasteners that hold the steering
rack itself to the car. So this thing is old. I think it's as old as the car. It seems to be leaking
from some of the seals somewhere on the input
shaft or the pinion area. So, we're gonna take it apart, clean it up and replace the seals. And, hopefully, that will stop the leak. (upbeat electronic music) (hose buzzing) What's that? So, when you're deciding whether
or not doing a DIY project like this is right for you, you need to take into
consideration some factors like the time. How much time is it gonna take you to do? And the money.
(bell chimes) How much money could this
potentially save you? And the tools. Do you already have all
the tools that you need to do the job? And how much knowledge you
have, what your skill level is. Can you do the job? And ultimately how reliable
you want the thing to be. Because a project like
this just is not worth it if it doesn't work at the end. Okay, so we're about ready
to rip into this thing. What do ya think? (upbeat jazzy music) So, now, as this comes apart, we're gonna wanna pay careful
attention to the order in which it comes apart so
we can put it back together. (upbeat jazzy music) Okay, so now that we've got
this whole thing blown apart, and we're at the point of
no return, let's take a look at how this steering
system actually works. I'm sure you've heard
of a rack and pinion, but now you can actually see it. This is your rack and this is your pinion. And when you steer your steering wheel, you turn your pinion, which
interacts with your rack and turns your wheels whichever way you're tryin to turn 'em. Now, that's pretty much how it works, whether it's a manual rack and pinion or a power steering rack and pinion. The power part comes in over here. This seal right here divides
the rack into two chambers. And one of those chambers
will be pressurized depending on which way
you're trying to turn. If you're trying to turn to the left, we'll pressurize this side and that'll help push the
steering rack this way to turn left. If you're trying to turn
right, it's the exact opposite. Pressure comes over
here and pushes this way to help you turn. The question is, how
do we tell the pressure which side to go on? Well, that comes back to the pinion, which has a tricky little
rotary valve built in. So when you turn the wheel, pressure comes from your
power steering pump into here, and you turn your pinion. And that rotary valve
makes a determination on which way you're tryin'
to turn and sends pressure to the side that'll
help you turn that way. It's honestly really simple. The only problem is when the seals go bad and you have to replace 'em. So let's replace 'em. (mellow jazz music) - [Man] What happened?
- [Zach] This seal just broke. - [Man] What did ya do? - [Zach] I don't know. Well, we've got terrible news. I was tryin' to put the rotary
valve back on to the pinion and this seal was apparently
a little too stretched out from install and is very fragile. And as I kinda slid it down, we just shocked this seal right in half. (beep) Boy, oh, boy, this is definitely a mark for the not worth it side of things. This is the kind of stuff that happens. But, man, I was being so careful. Now, what am I gonna do? I don't actually know. I guess it's not completely
unreasonable to think that like a Pet Boys nearby
might have this kit in stock. I guess I should go hit the old Internet. - [Man On Phone] Now what is this part? - It's for a 1994 Mazda Miata. - [Man On Phone] No, not
the, what part is it? - Oh, it's a power
steering rack rebuild kit. It's like a seal kit. - [Man On Phone] Oh, that's
a, oh, a seal kit, okay. - They're not gonna have it. But hopefully some auto shop does. - [Man On Phone] All right,
bud, none of our stores have it, not even our hub. The only way we can get it would be if we order it from the lender, but that would be here till Tuesday. - Okay, well, I appreciate it. I think I'm gonna keep tryin'. - [Man On Phone] Yeah, I'm so sorry, bud. - All right, no problem, thanks, man. - [Man On Phone] All right, yeah, bye bye. - Have a good one. (beep) These are the breaks, kids. These are the breaks. (dramatic piano music) All right, so over the
weekend, I did some learning, did some research, and I learned
a lot about Teflon seals. Basically, the problem with these is that when you install
'em on something like this, you kinda have to stretch 'em
out to get 'em into place. And then they're a little bit too big. So you need to figure out
how to shrink 'em back down. Basically, what we're gonna
do is put the new seal in some hot water before we install it. That should help make
it a little bit pliable, maybe expand it a tiny bit. And then once it's in place,
I'm gonna whip up a little tool out of a two liter of
Coke that should help us force it back down to a smaller
size, so we can install it without destroying it. Shoulda done that research
ahead of time probably, but, hey, we're here now. (upbeat electronic music) All right, let's give it a shot. - [Man] It hadn't been that long. - Well, how long you think it takes to warm that little tiny thing up? - [Man] At least more than two minutes. - What do you mean? It's as hot as the
temperature of the water now. The thing's tiny, it ain't
got no heat capacity. - [Man] We got one shot. - Well, what, do you think I have learned? (upbeat electronic music) All right, so that's the easy part. We got this far last time. Problem now is how
baggy the seal still is. Now we gotta make it be smaller. We'll see where we get with this, and if it still looks too baggy, I'll stick it in the freezer, for sure. Where's my scissors? (upbeat electronic music) Pop it through. - [Man] That (beep) is
not gonna do anything. - Yeah, I mean that is
my concern. (laughs) The idea here is the
pressure from the hose clamp will force the seal to shrink back up to its original size or
at least close to it. As long as we can get it in
place, it should be fine. The power steering
worked fine on the Miata, and then we had to get in
here and fix it and ruin it. You know what I mean? Honestly, what I could have done is, there was nothing wrong with this seal. I didn't really have to go this deep. I didn't have to replace
these Teflon seals. But we had new seals so I
figured I might as well. That was my mistake. Okay, well, let's take this thing off and see if it looks any better. Ah, it looks, yeah, it looks better. It's definitely not as baggy. I could see a gap before. I mean, I think we probably
should try to freeze it and see if that helps at all, but that looks better for sure. Oh, yeah, that's definitely better. This is gonna work. All right, it is the
official moment of truth. I just pulled this out of the freezer, and between the hose clamp
thing and the freezer, this seal looks pretty good. It's pretty tight on here and I think we're gonna be
able to get it installed. But if we can't get it
installed, if I break it, then that's it for power steering. So nervous. I'm so scared that it's
gonna drop down into that. This is the hard part. This is where I broke it last time. It looks pretty good,
I think it's gonna go. You can see it right in there, I think it's going into its groove. (dramatic symphonic music) I think it worked. Okay, cool. Never looking back. All right, so the seal
went in, I'm pretty sure. It didn't feel like it broke, felt great. So, I think we can just continue. Slam this thing back together
and put it back in the car. And, hopefully, we'll have no leaks. I mean, that's the whole thing. You know, this whole seal thing,
yeah, we got this seal in. But this wasn't even
our leak to begin with. And just 'cause I got this done doesn't mean that I fixed the leak. We could still put this
thing back together and it could still leak. So, this is a victory, but
it's not everything. (laughs) So let's just keep goin' before we get too happy with ourselves. I guess from this point on,
we're gonna go with gloves. (cheerful electronic music) Yeah. (hammer tapping) Okay, so we are almost back together. I'm about ready to tie
my boots into place. But before I do that, I'm
gonna find a center on the rack so that when we put it back
in, we're putting it in in the center of its
travel left and right. So, to do that, basically
I have the rack turned as if it were turned all
the way to the right. And this is our entire amount of travel. So right in the middle of this should be the center of our rack. So, I'm measuring the entire thing, then dividing it by half. I'll make a little mark there. I'll run it in until we hit that mark, and then that's how I'll
know that we're at center. That's approximately our center point. So we'll run until that. So that should be about center for us. Cool. So now we'll put our boots on and then put this thing back in the car. What do you think about that? - [Man] I love it. - Since I have the rack out and the power wash is
right there and hooked up, I'm gonna blast this real quick, get all this grime off of here. (hose buzzing) I got some water on your lens. All right, we're finally
ready to put this rack back in and see if we fixed the leak. So I'm gonna slide it
onto the steering column and then mount it up. (bolts clacking) (wrench clicking) All right, so last week when we were taking this thing apart, I took some paint marker and I marked on the ends of our tie rods where our tie rod ends met
up with the threads here. So that when we put things back together, we could roughly target what
our original alignment was. This will get us into the ballpark and it should make the car drivable if you're doing this at home
and you're not able to align it after the fact. But you should be able to align
it if you watch this video. So the last things we gotta do are pour some fluid in
the system, then bleed it, then start the car and see if it leaks. I've currently got the car off and I'm just going lock to
lock, all the way right, then all the way left, 15 or 20 times. And that'll force fluid through
the rack and force air out. And then I'll do the same
thing with the car running just to make sure. That would suck worse than anything if, like, it leaked
from somewhere else now. Can you even imagine? Well, this is the moment of truth. Let's turn it on and see if
all this work's been worth it or for the birds. (dramatic symphonic music) (ignition buzzes) (car running) Okay, now no huge leaks on first startup, so that's good news. Now I'm gonna check the fluid level, make sure we didn't suck a bunch down, make sure our level's still good. A little low, little low. Right in the middle. Voila, everything looks
bone dry and really nice. So, so far so good. (power tool buzzing) Now, all right, let's take it for a spin. (hood slams) (abrasive scratching) (electronic humming) (beep) Well, there's just that puddle? - [Man] No. - Oh, no. (beep) I wonder what is the-- - [Man] It's leaking from everywhere. - Okay, man, that's
just completely (beep). Ahh. (wood sliding) I've never seen anything
like this in my life. I can't believe this. This is some stuff I would
joke about happening. And now I'm living it and I don't like it. (wood sliding) (tools clanking) Ahh! (growling) So what do you guys think? Is this worth it? You wanna get into cars? (mellow electronic music) Well, I mean, this sucks. That is so sad. I think we just saw the
last of the power steering in this Miata, because I don't know, I'm not sure what I did
wrong or which seal I busted or what, but it's leaking all of the fluid onto the ground now. So, ah, (beep) you know what I mean? This is how it goes, I guess. Let's actually recap that real quick. In terms of time, well,
I'm not done yet, so, (buzzer buzzing) this is taking so much more
time than I anticipated. Money.
(bell rings) Well, I'm not done spending yet maybe. (buzzer buzzing)
Especially if you believe that time is money. Well, in terms of tools, ah, I thought I had all the
tools I needed to start with, but then there was that
kinda weird seal issue, which I didn't have the
right expensive tool for. So I tried to make one
and we saw how that went. (buzzer buzzing) But I did learn a thing or two. I mean, did I? I can't even say that I
officially learned anything because we're leaking
(buzzer buzzing) so much fluid.
(buzzer buzzing) So apparently I didn't learn anything, and that is the biggest
bummer of all to me, I think. I thought, you know what? Hey, this has been a bit of a struggle. There have been some hurdles. We didn't save that much money, but at least I learned something and at least we rebuilt
a power steering pump. But now I can't even say that. So, honestly, I'm so disappointed
in the way this has gone. I've never had so much trouble
with something like this and it sucks. So this was not worth it at all. I shoulda just bought a
remanufactured power steering rack from the get-go, or done
what everybody else does and just delete the power
steering and be done with it. Get rid of one more pump,
you know what I mean? This one was not worth it at all. I'm Zach and this has been
one hell of a money pit. I hope you guys enjoyed
it because I haven't. Now that we've got these huge puddles of power steering fluid in the driveway, we're gonna have to figure
out how to clean my driveway. So, get ready for that. And if you guys saw me, if
anybody knows a thing or two about rebuilding power steering racks, and you saw me do
something blatantly wrong that caused this, tell me, please.
Well he seems like he's not just a weekend wrench warrior. I did notice he wasn't lubing the seals, it's always a good idea with rubber o-ring to coat them in oil or grease on installation. (Some o-rings don't work well over time with oil) Only other thing is I didn't see him replace the o-rings that separate the hydraulic chambers in the rack. He probably did but given the leak he had, it would seem that those seals are the ones that failed. Maybe he did replace them but they got chewed up due to lack of lubrication? Maybe he didn't replace them at all? I've never seen the inner tie rode boots filled with p/s fluid before.... that was interesting.
Thanks for posting on /r/MechanicAdvice! This is just a gentle reminder to review review the rules. If you are here asking about a second opinion (ie "Is the shop trying to fleece me?"), please read through CJM8515's post on the subject. If this post is about bodywork, accident damage, paint, dent/ding, questions it belongs in /r/AutoBody or /r/Diyautobody If you have tire questions, check out r/howsmytire and ask there.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
He went wrong trying to rebuild the rack instead of spending the 200 bucks for a remanufactured
200 bucks really isn't much for a rack, even less when you consider that the cost of the seal kit needed for the old one. There are so many seals and the chance of one failing goes higher and higher the more there are.
Plus with a reman you usually have some warranty for the part if it does leak, no warranty when you try and put new seals in yourself.
He even said it at the beginning, when he talked about the knowledge and skills needed to do the work. It became obvious halfway through that he didn't have it, and honestly most actual licensed mechanics will never have rebuilt a rack either. We just install a reman because of the reasons I said earlier.... First the warranty from the supplier and second the labor, it costs more to pay me the hours to rebuild it then the reman part costs.