Steering: 1957 power steering pressure

[studevic]

hello all , can anyone tell me what sort of pressure would be going through the power steering hose from the pump to the saginaw steering box for a 1957 hawk , i am getting guy to make me up new hoses and he asked the question , any help would be welcome . thanks from roger

[Jeff_H]

Do you have your old hoses to copy?

The saginaw PS used on '53-'57 Studes was sourced from GM. You may find some tech specs searching for GM applications. I know I tried to find pressure spec's some years ago and gave up. I was told by a rebuilder tech when I had the Saginaw PS box rebuilt to NOT use a modern pump designed for rack & pinion with it as the pressures would be too high.

Note the pressure line from pump to gear box has a flow restrictor in it. If you have the original hose, it will look like it has a splice about 1/2 way. That is the restrictor. The return hose dose not have significant pressure and just has a hose clamp on the pump reservoir.

I had a local hydraulic hose place make me new hoses. They could not source the 45 deg SAE spec flare nuts that attach to the gear box and cut the tubing from the old hoses and welded it to the new. Watch out for that.

[jnormanh]

I can't say specifically about your pump, but I have seen some info that the older Saginaw pumps run about 850 psi, in some cases as high as 1600 psi. The return line is just a few psi.

[PackardV8]

hello all , can anyone tell me what sort of pressure would be going through the power steering hose from the pump to the saginaw steering box for a 1957 hawk , i am getting guy to make me up new hoses and he asked the question , any help would be welcome.

The saginaw PS used on '53-'57 Studes was sourced from GM. You may find some tech specs searching for GM applications. I know I tried to find pressure spec's some years ago and gave up. I was told by a rebuilder tech when I had the Saginaw PS box rebuilt to NOT use a modern pump designed for rack & pinion with it as the pressures would be too high.
ger

Actually, I've found just the opposite. Most conventional steering gear applications would run the pump between 1,100-1,300 psi with heavy-vehicle-high-demand applications on up to 1,550-1,600 psi. Rack-and-pinion steering on the other hand is generally a smaller pump and only 850-950 psi.

jack vines

[StudeRich]

To me, High Pressure is HIGH PRESSURE, any hydraulic fluid hose should be able to take Hydraulic Pressure of up to at least 2000 Lbs. so any Tractor type hydraulic hose should be just fine.

[studevic]

hi all, thanks for the advice , i do not have the original hoses or pump to go from , also the pump on the car now is a later model type shaped like a can of ham , i have been told that the pressure in this type of pump can be lowered if needed , again thanks from roger