This 940 turbo is in good shape except for regular replacement of parts. Of late, I notice that when the engine is hot having caught in the traffic, the steering oil reservior shows leakage not serious though. Likewise, the boot rack is also soaked with oil. If park overnight, spots of oil is noticed. My mechanics say to service the power steering would cost at least $500. Therefore it is best to drive on until it gives way. Can someone provides a clue how to have a cheap fix regarding the oil found in the boot rack. For the leaking reservior, I will replace soonest possible.

It may be a power steering hose that is leaking instead of the power steering rack. Hoses are not that expensive to replace. Clean everything off in the area of the leak, drive it a short distance, and determine where the leak is coming from.
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john

Thank you for the comments. But I'm still confused as to what to do. I have further inspected and noticed that oil is soaked at the bottom of the boot probably due to the flow from the leak/slippage. What really puzzle me is no visible leak other than the oil at the bottome of the boot. So, can someone tells me what to do next to 1. fix the slippage or 2. how to prevent it from getting worst.

You may want to try the Lucas Power Steering Stop Leak ,if you are looking for something to help get it along a few more months at least. It is one of the few 'mechanic in a bottle' type products I have found that really work.

I added it to the 240's ps system in January when it started leaking profusely from the seal into the boot, to hopefully get it through the winter and allow me the time to round up all the parts for the repair.

Well it is June, I have the re-built rack, tie-rod ends, new hoses etc and the leak has not returned and it drives and steers fine. I will swap it out when it starts leaking again, or in October.
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Gary Gilliam Sumerduck VA, '94 940 na Regina 150k, '86 240 180k

I am messing with a leaky p/s system on my 1986 244.

If yours leaks overnight, not a good sign, fix it soon. If not, get a few bottles of the correct ATF and you can "feed the leak" for a while.

Check to see if it's the rack itself or a hose or a connection. You may have to have car on a lift and idling to do this.

The hoses on my reservoir are seemingly glommed on permanently. I've seen several in junkyards where the attempt to remove a hose resulted in breaking off the plastic nipple, making the reservoir useless.

On my 1988 244, a slow leak one week had turned to a gusher in 14 days. I limped to my tech's garage, with refill stops en route, and he did a rebuilt rack, boots and tie rod ends, alignment for around $850. No new rack was to be found.

Allowing the fluid level to get too low will damage the pump. If you check the fluid and it's salmon pink and looks carbonated, it has gotten low enough to become air entrained; not a good thing.

Good Luck,

Bob

:>)

If your rack is leaking fluid into the boots then it is on it's way out for sure. Kind of crystal ball territory here but a rack like that can go for some time leaking out of the rack itself or it can go catastrophic like Bob's did and then you are done. While running the pump out of fluid is far from a good thing it is really amazing how much abuse that pump will take. I had a car in the shop yesterday that was like that, I topped it off and everything went right back to working just fine and the customer had been running it like that for an indefinite period of time already. Still, NOT ADVISABLE. Those pumps are far from cheap as well.

List on that rack is in the area of $575.00 and I believe the ends were 40-50 bucks apiece as well, add about 2.5-3.0 hours labor for install and align, 5 bucks in fluid and you will be up into the 8-9 hundred dollar range quick. If you buy the parts yourself and have what it takes to do it yourself you can save some money but you will probably spend all of one afternoon (or more) doing it and you will still need an alignment.

If you are replacing the reservoir you might want to replace the suction and return hoses as well. Like Bob pointed out, by this point in time most of those hoses are so darn hard that you cannot remove them without risking damage to the reservoir or slitting the hoses. If you are reusing the reservoir then just cut and replace the hoses, if you are running a new res the just take it out as an assembly with the hoses still attached to the res.

Mark