Hey guys, Chrisfix here.
Today I'm going to show you how to change your power steering fluid.
Power steering is what allows you to turn the steering wheel with one hand.
If it's difficult to turn your steering wheel
or your pump is making a whining noise like this
or your fluid looks black or brown like this.
It's time to change your power steering fluid.
So, in your manual you're going to flip to the page where the power steering fluid is
and you're going to see what kind of power steering fluid your car takes
For this Ford Windstar
It says that it needs power steering fluid that meets Ford specification and here's the number.
It also says that you can use type F automatic transmission fluid
I'm going to use power steering fluid.
In this case this power steering fluid will work well and is compatible in my Ford power steering pump
it meets the specifications, It actually exceeds it. So that's good
Just so you can see the difference in the power steering fluid
here's the new stuff
The new fluid is clear while the old fluid is black and gritty.
It has about a hundred thousand miles on it and really needs to be changed
There are two different methods you could use to change the power steering fluid
the method I'm about to show you is easier
But it doesn't get the system completely flushed
at the end of this video will be a link to another power steering video that I made
and this is a power steering flush video
it goes through all the steps to completely flush the system and got all the old fluid out
and replace it with new fluid that method takes a little bit more time, and it could be a little bit messier
but it might be worth take a look at the link will also be in the description below
but for the method I'm about to show you it's not going to be very messy
It's going to be fast and easy and it'll get the job done for most applications
So I'm going to jack the car up
You don't have to do this step, this step just helps you get a little bit more fluid out
If you don't want to do this step, you don't have to just skip over to the next step.
The idea is when you turn the steering wheel
fluid will be forced out of the power steering lines
and you'll get more dirty fluid out.
So like I said you could skip the step of getting the wheels off the ground
and you can straight to this.
So what you're going to need to do to change the fluid, is get a catch can.
Here's the old fluid from my other video you can see that's also black
That should be red. And you're going to need a turkey baster
I have a turkey baster right here
And this will help you get the fluid out
Some paper towels will also be good because you're going to make a little bit of a mess, I'm sure.
What your going to do is you're going to just take the cap off of the power steering pump reservoir
And start siphoning the fluid out
Just soak the fluid out like that...
Get to your catch can.
Empty it.
Suck more fluid out.
Try not to get it on your engine.
That's why I had the paper towel.
Try not to be sloppy.
Okay, the reason why I told you to lift the car up if you want
is because you can see here how there is no
power steering fluid left for me to suck out.
Now, I'm going to turn the steering wheel from lock to lock and you're going to see this is going to fill up
Now a lot of fluid came out, and that looks old and cruddy, too
So now you want to make sure you get every last drop that you could possibly get
because the more you get out
the better your fluid change will be
You can see that's completely empty and now we're going to add new fluid
Get a funnel so you don't spill it everywhere. Keep your paper towels down here. It'll make a mess
Now your owners manual will tell you how much fluid you could put in here
So put that much in. Make sure you don't overfill it keep an eye on how much fluid you're putting in
Remember there's air in the system right now, so it's going to get sucked down when you turn it on.
Now, we're going to start the engine and shut it off real quickly just to get more fluid sucked down
You don't want to hear any loud noises
No whining no humming you don't want to hear anything from this power steering pump put the nice clean cup on
And let's start the car real quick
You can see here the fluid level drop
so we're going to add [just] a [little] bit more and then [we're] you're going to go put the car on [the] ground and
Start it up and turn it from lock to lock to get all the air out and bleed the air out of the system
Essentially, we're over filling it because we're going to make room for any air that's escaping when we bleed the system
So now we'll drop the car
Start her up.
Now you're going to wait and let that power steering pump push fluid into the power steering lines
It's going to bleed itself a little bit and then you're going to have to bleed it by turning it sideways
So that's lock from one direction
That's lock to the other direction
That's locked to that direction and now we're going to go check the fluid
You can see the fluid's really low, so let's fill it up
So the bubbles are coming up, that's good
I'm going to take this off and we're going to go for a ride
Make sure you bring some extra power steering fluid on your ride
So on your ride make sure you have plenty of turns gonna take about ten minutes. Just drive around
First two minutes [check] your fluid make sure your fluid levels are good
I'm back, and I'm going to let the car cool down. I'm gonna to flush the system. Just a little bit more
Because we didn't do a flush you can see the fluid got dirty again
That's just extra old fluid that we couldn't get out so what we're going to do is I still have some new fluid left
I'm gonna siphon out this fluid and add some new fluid
Be careful because now the engine is hot
this fluid is hot
Now I'm going to add some more new fluid and you could do this as many times as you want and the more you do it
the cleaner that fluid is going to be inside
now to check the fluid level put it in
Pull it out
And you can see that's exactly to the top of the hot line. Okay, so after letting the engine cool
I'm going to start her up again, and we're going to see how the power steering pump sounds
So you can hear the power steering pump sounds normal now
I'm going to turn the steering wheel back and forth, and we'll see if it still sounds good
Awesome. Sounds good. All the air is out
which is what we want. The system is cleaned out at least a little bit. It has new fluid in it
Which is what we wanted and this was an easy clean fast method to get this done. Hopefully this video was helpful
if it was give it a thumbs up on the screen here there will be a video popping up this video is my other method
which flushes out the power-steering system even further and is more thorough you could look at that video
And you already saw this video so you can see which one you like better
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Now when you're driving around
After you put a couple miles on it, you might want to check the fluid level one more time. Otherwise, you're all done.