2006 Volvo s40 fwd @154000 miles;


On my drive to work steering felt stiff. I pull over to the side of the road and there is a torrent of fluid leaking from near the passenger side control arm. Go strait back home and I check the reservoir and it’s empty. Anyone have a idea where the leak could have been?

 

It's almost certainly either a high-pressure hose, or the rack itself. There's really no way to know for certain other than to get up close and personal with the oily area, and just keep tracing it up until you get to the source of the leak. The fluid always travels down, so when you get to the top of the oily area, you've probably found the problem.

 

Habby, I have the exact problem...what did you eventually do here?

Andy

 

a leaky hose can make a mess and mask where exactly the leak is coming from. If its not obvious which component is leaking, probably best to start by cleaning the wet areas, refill the reservoir, start up and give a couple of lock to lock turns then shut down and see where the fresh fluid is coming from, paying attention to the pump itself, the hoses and the rack ends.

 

Exactly! With a leak of that size, it shouldn't be too hard to spot (after cleaning). Also, on a generic note, normally fluid travels only down, so you can often just trace the source of the leak by following the flow up until it stops, then looking around to see how the "top spot" got wet.

 

Mine was the high pressure hose. It separated at the crimp where the rubber connects to the metal part. Damn expensive to have someone else replace it.

 

I replaced the entire steering rack. At first I thought I was the hoses from the pump so I bought and put in a new one. Still emptied the reservoir in 30 min. Then I checked the rack and that’s where it was leaking from. The rack and pinion pipes were leaking fluid at the seals. I wasn’t able to screw it back on because they weren’t threaded seals. So i bought a used steering rack on eBay, found a video on YouTube and swapped it out in my garage.

It’s a somewhat tedious task but I managed to get I done in 2 days goofing off. You have to drop the subframe to pull the rack out. Most of the work was just shimmying the racks in and out.