I spent the weekend with about 30 Minis doing some very spirited driving. Of those cars we had three with Power Stering pump problems. They all stopped working during driving and went to strickly "manual stering". All pumps restarted normal function after a few minutes cool down. Any one have a fix for this prob? What exactly happens? Is this some sort of vapor lock? Can higher temp P/S fluid be used? Does anyone build a cooler for the fluid? Help. thx bill

 

A few months ago my power steering fan was replaced in my '03 cooper s under waranty because it was making a loud whining noise.

 

Don't know about the MINI (I haven't had the problem you describe yet), but with my prior autocross car (93 Probe GT) the same thing would happen with the stock fluid on hot days and busy courses (lots of rapid steering angle changes). The fix was to switch to Redline power steering fluid. After I did that I didn't have any more problems. I believe that late model F-body (Camaro/Firebird) cars are even more vulnerable to boiling powersteering fluid.


Scott
90SM

 

If you ever looked under your car to see where the position of the fan is and you'll see why it went......On older models they had an open face grill and it took in ALOT of road debris and caused the fan to die. They later updated this with a heavier duty grill cover ( yea ok ). If ANYTHING hits that thing its gone and we have replaced pleanty of em. They have some aftermarket ones on MINI MANIA or other sites that have a better grill for protection.