Finding a Leak

The under trays are off (in front of the car) so let's lift it up and check it out. 

In the five years I've owned a 2009 Porsche Cayman, it has needed a bit of power steering fluid every 4 months or so. Until this past weekend that is, when I backed out  of the garage and left a puddle of fluid on the driveway. This was my sign to take this seriously and diagnose the exact issue. Here we go!

Up on the lift. Just a guess, but this is much easier than laying on the driveway or garage floor. 

Thanks to the Internet, Google, YouTube and other web pages, it seems that these cars tend to have power steering failures in the fluid lines where a rubber section joins a metal section. Other than that, well, the dang power steering fluid pump  might be bad. I pretty much ruled out the steering rack up by the front wheels being the source of the leak, because any fluid on the ground was towards the back of the car. With a mid engine car, that's where the fluid goes into the reservoir and that's where the power steering pump is. 

Power Steering Fluid fill is the green cap. 

So, thanks to being able to get on a lift at school, I just had to remove the under trays on the bottom of the car, and then start some serious automotive Dr. Holmes detective work to figure out where the leak might be. Right about here you should be thinking that this guy should have looked into this sometime earlier, like before the leak got really bad, but here we are!

Right behind the two seats, with the carpet and aluminum covers out of the way, IT'S AN ENGINE! On the lower left is the belt tensioner, and the big round part with three bolts goes to the power steering pump. Just checking it out for now, will probably have to remove some of this to do the work later. 

Up on the lift, off with the underneath trays, and yes, there is a rather wet looking bunch of stuff in the rear of the car! As you might guess, the leak seemed to be centered underneath the pump where the pressure line and the return line start heading for the front of the car. At this point, it could have been the hoses or the pump, let's keep looking around. 

No signs of fluid leak in the middle of the car, move on to the front and under the engine. 

Up front, the steering rack and hoses looked dry, so no leaks there. Maybe I should mention that after seeing the big leak, I went on a drive anyway, based on not hearing that fun-filled SQUEEEAAAAAK sound when the steering fluid is low, and that the steering felt fine. Oh well. Back to the rear of the car. 

Looking up at the two power steering fluid lines going into the steering rack. No signs of leaks up here!

We looked around the pump as best we could (because, mid-engine car) and did NOT see any problems around the pump. Looking down below at the hoses, well, that's where the mess was, so this pretty much means I get to replace two hoses. Two long hoses. Two long hoses that go down from the middle, turn towards the front, then take a turn or two and snake around the suspension to get up to the steering rack. in other words, it's not a straight shot, so it should be interesting to get this job done. 

High pressure and return lines, no leaks here!

The lines go up and over some of the front suspension to get to the steering rack. Dry. And dry is good!

One of my instructors Bobby Griffin came over to see how it was going, and he suggested running the engine with it up on the lift, turning the steering wheel, and having us down below looking at the suspected area, just to 100% guarantee we had the right diagnosis. GENIUS! Once we did that, BAM, a big old bunch of the green power steering fluid came out, and we found a split in the line where a rubber part connects with a metal connector. Sure enough, 100%, guaranteed, you can take that diagnosis to the bank!

Oh, we found some fluid all over the place on the lines here below the pump. Just under the red flashlight, maybe you can see the crack in the line where the rubbery part (on the right) meets a metal connector. Apparently this is a common failure point. In this case, it's a 16 year old car, so go figure. 

Coming up next, somebody better start searching that old Internet to find prices and sources on the lines I need, and then taking out the old ones and putting in the new ones. How hard could that be?????????