Rebuilt Power Steering System Sucks Now?! (1 Viewer)

[CaptainAussum]

I have a ‘97 LX450 that was squealing like a pig every time I turned the wheels. So this weekend I fully rebuilt the PS pump and gear box using the fine resources on Mud and OEM rebuild kits and a new bearing in the pump (original one was absolutely toast).

After the rebuild, torquing everything to spec and bleeding a lot of air out of the system I find the steering tightish whileup on jack stands and nearly impossible to turn with wheels on the ground.

It does not improve with increasing RPM and the adjusting screw was tweaked to the point where it was equally crap turning left or right (and about 3.5ish threads above the lock nut).


What could possibly be wrong? I can’t find similar symptoms searching the net. Any suggestions are appreciated, sorry for the long post.

 

[CaptainAussum]

In case anyone runs into this issue in the future I solved the mystery...

I took off the pressure line on the pump side and found that I assembled the spring and valve backwards. So I had the spring in between the port fitting and the valve. Reassembled this afternoon and the truck is driving perfect. Surprisingly didn’t seem to damage anything..
Heres what the correct orientation is.

 

[Rusty Marlin]

Thank you for sharing your mistake. I need to dive into this myself sooner rather than later.