Monday, February 21, 2022

Another Easy Fix!

SPOILER ALERT! (it's a joke)

The NMS team is your average bunch of Joe's trying to keep their cars running, mostly because you can have a LOT more fun in a vehicle that runs than one just sitting in the driveway! Anyway, long story short, my car started making an odd noise a few weeks ago, and I was thinking maybe it was just from the cold weather, or maybe because I wasn't driving it much. The noise would go away after driving a while, but that noise just didn't sound right. 

At least it wasn't one of THOSE sounds that tell you to get your credit card out because it's an expensive sound. After concluding that part of the noise was from turning the steering wheel, a little bit of Internet searching turned up low power steering fluid as a probable cause in my model. I'm happy to report that today I filled the power steering fluid up to full, and the noise has gone away for now. Yes, the fluid level was low, so I feel real smart for letting that happen in the first place, so my only defense is that with my mid-engine car, just checking the fluid is a little harder than your average car. That brings us to the following lesson, just in case you might need this particular bit of automotive knowledge in filling the power steering fluid that is NOT located in the front of your car. 

Looking into the car from the rear, we need to remove that net and the 
carpeted piece under it to start getting to the engine. Easy. 


No carpet, so now we have to remove the aluminum engine cover, 
which means removing 5 Torx bit screws. 

Here's a T30 Torx bit, and away go those screws and the engine cover!

NOW we're looking at the engine, and finding the fill cap for the 
power steering fluid is pretty easy. 

Well, it's dirty in there sitting on top of the engine, so I cleaned this off a bit. Hey, you'd 
be dirty too if you'd been sitting on an engine since 2009!
No obvious signs of leakage here, so later I'll check underneath, and the steering rack and 
tie rods in the front where the actual steering takes place. 

The filler cap has this little dipstick on it, clearly marked MAX and MIN. 
I saw NO fluid on the stick at all, so prepared to fill with fluid. 

Thanks to the FCP Euro folks in Connecticut, because I had just ordered 
fluid (and some brake fluid) the day before, and the nicely packaged goodies arrived
the next day with standard shipping!  That's quick service, so I guess it's nice to live close to their store!

My owners manual said to use the Pentosin brand power steering fluid, so that's 
what I got. While the reservoir holds 1 liter of fluid, it took much less than that
to get the fill mark up to where it should be. The brake fluid will come in 
handy when I flush the brake lines later this year. 

Hopefully truth and justice and running cars will win out again with this simple maintenance step. I'd like to thank the Internet, FCP Euro, and my owner's manual too! Oh, and if you need a drop or two of power steering fluid, stop by some time and we'll top you off!

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