The Beast

Power Steering Gear

It is finally done. I can't lie, I had procrastinated on many occasions to get this part replaced. I was never looking forward to it. Although in hind-sight it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Granted, it is summertime in Phoenix, I drank coffee all day and very little water and got a mild case of heat exhaustion, I was able to hold it together to get it finished.

I was able to buy the part from rockauto. Luckily they allow a 6 month window to return your core. 5 months 10 days into that window I got serious about getting it swapped out.

For posterity, I'll put the step by step here with some pitfalls I ran into.

1. Drain out power steering fluid. Well, this was already done from driving it around a few times. The consistency that it would leak was pretty fluid (ah thank you). It was still pretty messy so I was sure to have a lot of towels handy.
   
   
2. Brake and AC lines are bolted all over in your way so you'll have to take those off. 13mm I think.
   
   
3. Pitman arm removal. This was the part that I dreaded the most because I heard you need an impact wrench and a pitman arm puller. I think most pitman arms a puller is needed but I was lucky. My pitman arm has a slit in the side of it so all I needed to do was power off the bolt, and grab my 24" flathead screwdriver that I call the Scorpionator (kills Scorpions from far enough away) and find a way to pry it off once loose.
   
   

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