power steering fluid appearance
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1st Gear
Joined: Dec 2009
Posts: 23
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power steering fluid appearance
A few weeks ago my power steering started acting funky. I checked my power steering pump fan and found that it was blowing fuses. The fan was shot (probably because I pushed through a lot of snow and mud this last winter and may have pushed some debris up into the fan). In any case, I had the fan replaced and it was better but still had some issues. I decided to change the power steering fluid and found all of the contrary information online about flushing the power steering fluid. Mini doesn't recommend changing the fluid out but seems to have their dealers include a flush in their maintenance practices. Since the pump may have overheated while the fan was out, I thought it wise to check the condition of the fluid. I extracted a couple of cups of fluid with a syringe that had a small vinyl hose attached to it. The stuff looked like old motor oil, not anything like the new Pentosin that I replaced it with. I did this a couple of times with intermittent start ups until the container of Pentosin was gone. It seems to help but why on earth would Mini not engineer a way to drain the power steering fluid?
4th Gear
Joined: Dec 2010
Posts: 474
Likes: 1
From: Northern California
Do you mean to post this in the Gen 1 area?
...w/ the hydraulic PS set up.
Having changed this stuff on Audi's, I haven't ever heard of a real drain plug in a P/S system. The way it can be done is to remove a hose on the pressure side of the pump and run it into a drain pan. On Audi's that can be done by unclamping a hose at the small cooling tube they run to the front radiator area. At the same time, use a hose on the suction side of the pump (for example from the fluid reservoir) to pull the new fluid in right out of the can. Have a second person cycle the engine very briefly. It can pump the whole can in 15-30 seconds.
And yes, good ideas to change fluid at some point to help life of the internal seals. The racks tend to be expensive and a real pain to change, and pumps cost too. But, if you run the pump dry, it gets damaged very quickly so need to do this carefully. The other option is just dumping out the reservoir a bunch of times and replenishing with clean fluid, but that is less systematic.
Having changed this stuff on Audi's, I haven't ever heard of a real drain plug in a P/S system. The way it can be done is to remove a hose on the pressure side of the pump and run it into a drain pan. On Audi's that can be done by unclamping a hose at the small cooling tube they run to the front radiator area. At the same time, use a hose on the suction side of the pump (for example from the fluid reservoir) to pull the new fluid in right out of the can. Have a second person cycle the engine very briefly. It can pump the whole can in 15-30 seconds.
And yes, good ideas to change fluid at some point to help life of the internal seals. The racks tend to be expensive and a real pain to change, and pumps cost too. But, if you run the pump dry, it gets damaged very quickly so need to do this carefully. The other option is just dumping out the reservoir a bunch of times and replenishing with clean fluid, but that is less systematic.
Last edited by MP1.6T; Jun 6, 2011 at 12:45 PM.
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