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Had a strange failure this weekend--wonder if anyone else has had this.
Driving home Saturday night. Absent mindedly almost missed a turn. Braked hard and swung the car to the left pretty quickly. Moments later, this horrendous grinding, groweling sound which got worse with every movement of the steering wheel (and eased, but did not disappear, when the steering wheel was not touched). Made it home, about two miles. Checked the PS fluid level--empty.
Next day, I fill up the PS, but the noise was still there. Then noticed a growing puddle under the left-side wheel well and the reservoir level dropping. Great, I thought, I blew out the rack.
After jacking up the car and examining the situation, I found that the flare connection (at the rack) joining the high-pressue line from the pump to the rack, was about one turn loose. After spending the rest of the day removing various suspension components to get enough wrench grip on the flare nut, and after bleeding the thing, everything was back to normal.
Carefully examining my driveway, I noticed dozens of dried up drips. I suspect that these were previous drips from the connection and that, although the flare nut was loose for a while, the flare itself was, for the most part, sealing. My high-speed, rapid turn simply pressurized the system to such a degree that it broke the nominal seal on that flare connection and now I had a full-grown failure.
Has anyone seen this failure before?
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