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The PS pump in my car has been making noise for a while, and had a tick that could be felt turning it by hand, so I recently sourced a junkyard PS pump from another x308. It seems to spin smoothly, but I did notice it has a good bit of what feels like seal drag when spinning it on the bench by hand (no fluid in the pump). It makes sense that it would drag in my head since they are compressing up to the ksi range, but I haven't worked with these enough to know from experience. Is a moderate amount of seal drag expected when spinning a dry (good) PS pump?
I also noticed there are seal kits on rockauto, is it worth grabbing one of those to rebuild the pump while it's out? Or are those only for aftermarket pumps, as the FSM says the pump is non rebuildable?
I would take non rebuildable with a grain of salt, like the non-serviceable transmissions. A power steering system is simply a hydraulic system and every hydraulic system I've seen is capable of a rebuild. Whether your replacing hoses (like I just did on my Vette) and/or doing seals, its just a matter of if the parts are available.
Just a drain / refill several times can resolve some pump issues as the 20 year old fluid breaks down and is just as important as the metal parts . Just did that on a different car that sounded like a bearing and now silent . Cavitation is one of the sounds not often thought of but a phenomena in pump physics
Last edited by Lady Penelope; Dec 13, 2017 at 06:37 PM.
Cracked the "new" pump open to take a look - doesn't seem like there's much serviceable bits in there, not without some beefy pullers since both sides are pressed onto the axle. The only easy part would be the main pump body seal, hopefully I'll luck out and that one survived the reassembly, since those aren't available online that I've seen.
It's a pretty neat design these PS pumps have for compression, I didn't know about it before. I'll be sure to flush the fluid when I put this one in, but having seen this one, I'm wondering if the tick I felt on the "old" one when rotating by hand is one of those roller vanes sticking.
This pump felt fine to spin when the back was off, so I'm guessing the "drag" feeling is normal.
PS Pump Seal Drag
