Power Steering Leak on 2008 Honda Pilot

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radley

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so the lady i been hanging with for a while, well, of course I end up diagnosing/researching/fixing her ride, 08 Pilot.

Been a good car, but recently sprung a bit of a power steering fluid leak. Thought maybe a bad seal in rack, like my Malibu had. Took a peek under hood, looked at pump, could see leaking from pump area, running down timing belt cover..

found a small hole/crack in line, pretty small/minor but definitely leaking from there. it's not horrible like my bad seal leak was, and way better being either high or low pressure line.

which one is this? pic 1 is overview, pic 2 is closeup of the hose that goes back toward firewall, goes down, comes to the sensor hookup? and reduces down to that black line that must go into rack. this line comes from pump of course. is this high pressure line?

other line goes from pump to reservoir, leaves reservoir and reduces down to smaller metal line, runs across vehicle in front, just behind radiator, and maybe cuts back and hooks into rack on driver side? I'm assuming..
is this low pressure?

any tips/tricks? i did my Malibu and learned a few things, but that was replacing the whole rack. I'm not sure if rack is leaking from bad seal or not, don't think so but gotta replace this line first and take it from there...

i haven't youtube or researched quite yet.
 

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just a follow-up in the unlikely case someone has to do this.

i was able to get the job done without droppingt the sub frame/chassis whatever it calls for in the piloteer walk-through. my arms and hands were able to fit in there and take off the brackets for the pressure hose, one from passenger side wheel well , the other from directly underneath the car, there was more room there.

the tough part was loosening the pressure line from the rack and breaking that... i had a crows foot attached to a 6-7" extension, attached to swivel, attached to 21" extension, attached to my ratchet... i was basically inverted feet/ legs sticking out of front of car, leaning down in toward firewall to get it.. it was tough.. but once I busted it loose, just used a 14mm open end to continue disconnecting the pressure hose from rack.. i had to turn it, flip wrench, turn another 1/8", flip wrench back over and repeat, repeat, repeat... re-connecting was easier, just used open end wrench to do whole thing from that inverted position, went down, re-installed brackets, make sure line was in place before tightening up pressure hose for good...

my big mistake was taking off the 2 "in rack" lines from the driver side.. i removed the connections on the driver side of the 2 in house lines of the rack, to make room to try to remove pressure line.. this was before I just did it from up top... it created more room, but not enough to be useful. the directions didnt call for this but i didnt want to worry about dropping sub chassis etc...

after i got the job done i tried to simply twist the 2 in house rack lines back into their holes.. the bottom one went in well enough.. still took a bit to twist cuz degree of turn is limited. the top one took forever. the pitch of the bolt is so small.. i couldn't get it threaded. tried for 1.5 hrs. had a couple gear head friends come over and try.. brought over rethreading kit to clean out, coulnd't fit it in space. they tried for 2 hrs.. contemplated taking rack out completely, getting good leverage on it, etc... my fingers hurt, few cocktails in praying they'd get it.. couldn't.. the angle of the molding onthe rack suggested the angle you'd try to thread it... went to Ace hardware to try to find matching thread, size, pitch nut and bolt to try to clean it out,, if that was problem. couldn't find but picked up 12mm 1.25 and 1.5 pitch.. looked way too big from pic i took. it was. threaded nut on like 1/2 turn, all it'd go, same with bolt into molded hole in rack.. by this time it was 8pm, 12 hours in. this was my saturday the other weekend... dreaded sunday if had to take rack out jsut to get this frickin thing back it..

tried again in desperation, just started twisting with hurting fingers...and it took... and got wrench to continue.. keeping pressure just in case of wathever.... it kept going.... kept going... OMG OMG OMG!!!!!

I got it! can't tell u the feelign of relief... the problem was that the threads inside weren't "centered" with the molding of the rack... so all that trying and trying with such a small pitch.. it wasn't catching... the angle had to be more parallel with ground versus what molding suggested... OMG...
so waited til sunday morning and put wheels back on per torque spec, filled up wtih fluid, checked, topped off while still on jacks... good to go..

Damn! Shows ya though,. be persistent, i fyou want somptin b ad enough, u can do it.
 

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