Steering: How do I troubleshoot my Power Steering failure? 63 Lark

[Merto]

I rebuilt my power steering pump and the actuator. I did not rebuild the piston. The power steering worked intermittenly and then stopped working altogether. I drained the pump and the fluid was blackish, but there are no leaks in the system. I had someone turn the steering wheel with fluid in the system and did not see or feel flex in the hoses, and had no power assistence.

when the system worked it did not work well. What do I do
What did I do wrong in rebuilding the parts?

Thanks for your assistence,
Milt Simon 310 466-4441 in Santa Monica
63 Lark Convertible 259 V8

[karterfred88]

Did you replace the hoses? If not did you rebuild the valve assembly off the car with the pitman arm? Double check the right hand hose went back on the valve in the correct spot and didn't get mixed up with the left hand hose. That will produce your result. Otherwise loosen the hoses one at a time at the ram. With engine running and front end off the ground see if one or the other start to leak when turning the wheel left to right. It is possible the piston seal blew with the newly rebuilt pump. Most likely cause of NO power is the left and right hoses being backwards. But, since you had intermittent power before, I'd replace the ram seal and drain it thoroughly, and try again after checking the hoses, and making sure that you loosened the spool valve locknut one flat so there is some motion of the valve with the ball on the pitman arm. There are a whole lot of other things that can happen, but in order to work the pitman ball stud must be able to move a little bit on center so the valve can redirect the fluid to the ram. Get back to us with the exact method you used to rebuild the valve, and if you have rebuilt the ram and checked the hoses and it still isn't working maybe we can help zone in on the cause.