[STORMINORMAN]

Wife was driving the SVX home and all of a sudden the steering got "real tight" in her parlance. Almost all the ATF was gone, she was 500 yards from home and stopped, anyway (this time!). It looked like it had all puked out from under the cap, highly charged pink foam. NO REAL PREVIOUS POWER STEERING ISSUES, not rough, not binding not puking foam. It was making a bit of a whirring sound for a while...

Now there is very little power assist, if any.

I replaced the o-ring after totally cleaning out all the fluid in the reservoir: this stuff looked OK, still nice and pink, no chunks or dirt, no burnt smell.

Refilled the reservoir, disconnected the return hose, started up the car, it appears the pump is working as it pumped out some older ATF, then all of a sudden pumped out more pink foam, lots of bubbles!!!

I guess I don't grip the significance of there being a leak in either the high pressure output line or in the return line. If it were on the high pressure line shouldn't it be readily visible? As in "ATF streaming out"? If it's on the return side, is this where the bubbles & froth are coming from? Or can it just be a cracked hose or a loose connection?

If it's not the o-rig that is letting air into the pump could it be the pump itself that is cavitating, perhaps through the main seals? I'm getting a length of power steering 3/8th hose to cut to fit for the three or so pieces of return hose. I'm led to believe that the high pressure hose has to be either new or rebuilt by a hydraulic shop, but that one still does need to use dedicated POWER STEERING HOSE vs. fuel line, etc. on the return side, too...

The best info I have is that the A-1 Cardone P/N 215882 rebuilt pump is the same for both kinds of power steering: the difference seems to be in the rack and in the electrical do-hickey that screws into the output side of the pump.

Anybody out there with any ideas? I'm considering removing the belt and driving this down to the service station at the bottom of the hill to get this up in the air where I hear it is a lot easier to remove/replace the hoses.

How do we know when it is, in fact, a pump issue?