Fixing the Power Steering

A 40+ year old car with close to 100,000 miles on it is very likely going to need the power steering repaired. My Mustang was no exception to that. The steering wasn’t wonderful but it worked, or so I thought it did. Interesting what you get use to. Eric, my new mechanic, told me last summer, after driving my car for the first time, that the steering was not safe. We put the car on a lift and he showed just how bad and potentially dangerous it was. Oh, you mean that bad ball joint and the bent power rod with the nonexistent bushings.

Where do you find parts, new or old? Turns out the Lares Corporation specializes in those parts. You can get them directly from Lares or from many of the car parts vendors. We ordered them through Summit Racing. Lares told me they discounted the same parts to Summit so their price would likely be less than directly from Lares.

What did we replace:

Kind of a sad and funny story about this whole process. You know how this goes, you start fixing this issue and once you get into it, you discover the obviously bad part alone is not going to fix the problem. In this case, replacing those parts made the steering better, but not what was expected. On further investigation, the steering gear in the car was not the correct one. Somehow my car ended up with the 19.9:1 gear instead of the stock 16:1. All these years it had to wrong steering gear. As we speak, I am awaiting the rebuilt Lares gear to come in for installation. Considering all the other part and hoses I have replaced, I am hoping this is the final piece to restore my steering.

Things I learned going through this process:

• On Mustangs from 1967 to 1970, Ford used the same steering gear on cars with manual steering and power steering. The 1965-66 steering gears were different. The power steering pump is not integral to the steering gear, it is a separate unit.
• Things wear out especially bushings. Once you get into replacing parts on one of these old cars, assume you should check and likely need to replace lots of parts, especially hoses. None of these parts were designed to last 40+ years.
• If you have sloppy steering there can be a number of things causing that issue. Don’t over look the front suspension.
• Don’t assume the shop you are working with knows more than you do about this old, obsolete steering system. I had to take my car back to the shop three times as we sorted out issues and replaced parts. I should have done more homework to be able to advise the shop. The real question is do I replace all the parts or wait until another one fails, then replace it? The shop took the stance to advise me to replace the obviously bad part. Replacing the powering steering control valve demonstrated that the slave cylinder was also bad. If I was doing this back in the 70’s with someone more familiar with this type of power steering it would have been different. I wasn’t. On my front suspension I just replaced ALL of it rather than one piece at a time.
• The power steering on these early Mustangs and Fords actually used a GM style Saginaw setup. This same system was used on a lot of GM cars like the Corvette. Which doesn’t say much about the Corvette. The good news is this particular power steering system was used in a LOT of Ford and GM cars, probably Chrysler as well. Parts are readily available. Lares rebuilds them all and also offers brand new parts.
• Replacing these steering parts will cause air to get into the power steering fluid. How do you get the air out? You can’t bleed it. You have to drive the car and the air will eventually bubble out in the power steering reservoir. In the meantime, your steering is going to act funny and make noises when you turn the wheel. I drove all the way home then turned around drove back to the shop to ask what was wrong with it. The owner told me that was the air in the system and would work its way out. It would have been nice to know that when I picked the car up. And this is a shop I have been doing business with for many years on this car. Several hundred miles later, I am still working the air out of that system.
• Be sure to use Type F fluid. Do NOT use modern Dexron, or Power Steering Fluid. It will cause foaming and lead to future issues and wear.

A side note and couple of stories

Thought I would share this long ago, steering story. Shortly after I got the car I was living and working in Lexington KY. My Shelby was with me. I got worried about those old power steering hoses so I ordered a new set. The kit came with two hoses, one was long and the other much shorter, sized to fit the application. When I looked at the job to replace them, I decided it was bigger than I wanted to deal with in my home garage. I set an appointment with Man of War Ford to replace the hoses and for a new power steering pump. We had a car show coming up at Indiana SAAC’s Spring Fling in Nashville IN, the following weekend. I stressed to the dealer I needed the car back no later than Thursday of that week. Got a call that the car was done. Picked it up, loaded it for the weekend event. Friday morning we took off and headed west to Louisville on Highway 64. This is a very scenic route with lots of hills & bridges with very few places for patrols to hide. You’d have to get me with an airplane. I was flying low.

I flew past a Cadillac on the four lane highway. It wasn’t long when I noticed the Cadillac catching up with me. I’m doing over three figures. I kicked down my accelerator to pull away. Immediately a cloud of smoke exited the rear of my car, right into the path of that Cadillac. I quickly checked the oil pressure. It was fine. An exit was coming up. I pulled off to check my car. I was expecting the worse but I had oil pressure. In checking out the situation, it was the power steering. My new, long power hose was in two pieces. It had a couple of hose clamps in the middle, holding it together. All my power steering fluid had emptied onto the Cadillac on my tail when I accelerated. (I bet he had surprise when he checked out his paint job. Power steering fluid will mess up your paint to say the least.)

Apparently, at the Ford garage, some genius felt that hose was too long and cut it, then realized it was the correct length. So what do you if your hose is too short, splice it with hose clamps. When I kicked it down at 100 MPH+ it blew that splice apart. We were half way to Nashville, I flipped a coin and decided to continue the trip. I removed the belt from the power steering pump, put the hose back together and headed west. Yes, you can drive without the power steering, it just takes a lot more effort.

We returned on Sunday. I took my car back to the Ford dealer on Monday. The shop manager denied it was their fault. I ended up calling their Ford rep to get my car fixed. What had happened was real obvious. The long hose had been cut and spliced together, you could see the clamps. Ford replaced the hoses and my new power steering pump. That was the LAST time I had a Ford shop do any work on my car.

Lesson learned: don’t assume your mechanic knows how to fix your classic Mustang. Newer Ford Mustangs are different than old Mustangs. Secondly, check their work. How can splicing a power hose in a power steering system be a good idea, especially in a Shelby Mustang?

I might as well toss in this story while I am at it. This has nothing to do with my Shelby. I owned a Mercury Merkur Xr4Ti at that time as well. A German Ford. What a wonderful piece of junk that car was. Loved the car, although it needed more horsepower. The problems with it were the 5 speed transmission and turbo charger. As I recall Ford put at least three transmissions in it and two or three turbo chargers all under warranty. When the warranty was running out, the service manager recommended I get rid of the car. Problem is NO ONE would take the car in as a trade. I ended up trading it for a NEW Merkur Xr4Ti at that dealer. The new Xr4Ti had the same transmission issue. Darn transmission would lock up. It stopped running on me after coming back from Indianapolis. I had to call a tow truck once again. The problem was the transmission had an oiling problem on 5th gear. Driving the car for a long distance in 5th gear would cause it to get hot and lock up.

The dealer had the car for a couple of weeks waiting on the new German transmission. When I got the car back, it wouldn’t steer correctly. I took it to an alignment shop. That owner called me and told me he couldn’t adjust it because there were some bent parts on it. He said it looks like it had been in an accident. Accident?! No one drove this car except me. I would know it it had been in an accident, except for a few time when I didn’t have the car.

I called the towing company and he assured me nothing happened to it while he had control of it. He swore that he had taken it directly to the Mercury dealer. I called that dealership and, of course, the service manager told me nothing happened to it while they had it. I can’t drive it like this. I go to the dealership to check into getting replacement parts to fix this and what it would cost.

Almost everyone in the shop knew me. I was a frequent guest. If it wasn’t the transmission, I was in that department for the turbo charger or the wiring or the antenna in the rear glass or…. As I was waiting for the service manager, the kid that washed the cars walked up to me and asked if anyone told me about them dropping my car off their lift. WHAT? Dropped my car off their lift? Are you serious? That would explain how those steering parts got bent. The service manager denied that had happened. I had to go to war with the dealer to get them to admit they did the damage. Once again, I had to go over a dealership’s head to Ford directly. The dealership fixed my car. They did screw me out of rental reimbursement for that last time they had my car for a couple of weeks. I traded that Merkur off for a Nissan Z car. That was the end of my driving Fords or dealing with a Ford service shop. How sad. My Dad was a Ford guy. I had owned a number of Mustangs and Fords. Incompetent Ford dealers and poor quality new Ford cars drove me to Japanese cars.

One more story, I drove my Nissan 300Z to a Mustang club meeting one night. Remember, I own a 1968 Shelby Mustang. Several of the guys in the club ribbed me badly, as if I had committed some kind of sin, about driving a Japanese car, especially to a club meeting. One of those car friends strongly recommended I get a Lincoln Mark IV like his wife had. Oh really, how many new engines did you say Ford put in her new Lincoln? Well, three, but those were all paid for under the warranty. Right…. Buy Japanese.

Next Side Note: Samaritan Tire installed the new steering components for me. The last piece was replacing the steering gear. On a nice couple of days in April, I took my car to them. They had it all day on a Friday. Later in the day, the owner told me removing the steering gear was a much more difficult task then expected. Next problem was the rag joint he got to replace that odd in my car did not have a place to bolt it to the steering on both sides. Really? So as we approached closing time on Friday, he told me the car wasn’t totally done and that he needed one more day. But he could give it back to me to drive over the expected 85 degree weekend if I wanted it back. Is it fine to drive? Yes, but the steering wheel needs to be aligned. Whatever that means. Fine, I will pick it up. That Saturday I am driving it and loving the change. Awesome car to drive now. I now had power assisted steering rather than pure power steering. More like you would expect in a car like this. It was awesome. Great, that is, until I attempted to pull into a parking space. I didn’t have enough left turn to actually get into the space. No big deal but I now know what he meant. I had more turns to the right than to the left. I simply had to turn left out of the parking space but couldn’t make the turn. I had to back up again to aim the car correctly. I am taking it back first nice day to get this fixed.

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