Oh Dear..

Nomisf · 17 Apr 2007 at 20:08

Power Steering Fluid Blowout = Parked In Bush

Well ... what happened today...

Driving along, winding country lanes as you do... the steering goes hellishly tight. Every time the steering turns theres a horrid grating noise and juddering feedback. Next thing everyone in the car knows - we are parked in a bush :eek:

Now thankfully this wasnt far from home and the car hadnt taken any damage from the bush - so between the lot of us , we drove it home extremely slowly fighting the steering all the way. Upon closer inspection ... :

By the way , 1996 Plate Vauxhall Vectra B 2.6 V6 (X-25) CDX :

Horrid sticky power steering fluid absoloutly coating everything, and dripping from everywhere. It seems the leak had occured in some of the piping that runs behind the bumper near the fan. Unfortunatly , as anyone familiar with these cars knows it a pain to get to anything .. so ...

Half the car off later, and it seems the last buch of cowboys that repaired the car (alternator replacment - need front removing to be done), had left some things to chance, in short there is a loop of aluminum tubing that runs around the front of the radiator to cool the power steering fluid, now instead of putting the proper clips back , which they had broken , they had cable tied the entire piping assemly back the the bumper.

Nomisf · 17 Apr 2007 at 20:10

Over time this had loosened and left the pipes rubbing on the ring of the fan ... which had rubbed a hole through the pipes :eek:

and these are aluminum pipes.

turns out i had also gotten to the bottom of another problem , the engine has been running wrong for a while now, and it seems that one of the air feed pipes had also been eated by the fan , becuase of these cable ties...

Now all well and good... found the problem , but now i need new parts... for the cooling pipe for the PAS, the garage want no less than £74.99 ! this is about a meter of aluminium tube ! Fortuantly the air feed balancing pipe is only £4 ....

But yes , i will update when i have it all back together, but lest this be another warning .. dont let idiot cowboys fix your car . it may well kill you.

Just thought i would post becuase it amazed, and scared the hell out of me.

Rgds,
Nomisf

Nomisf · 18 Apr 2007 at 00:05

I would do , but unfortunatly a lot of the Vectra's ive found around local yards have been in head ons or front impacts, and this pipe is one of the most forward parts in the bay

.

Rgds,
Nomisf

Nomisf · 18 Apr 2007 at 16:29

well, i have all the parts now, going to go about fitting them soon - i like the hire car idea

, will check out the brake hoses actually - only had the hoses and master cylinder done recently though so it should be ok .. i hope..

Anyway , will update with pics later..

rgds,
Nomisf

Nomisf · 19 Apr 2007 at 00:19

really lucky i am to be honest.

Yeah, the repair job was done quite a while ago now but i was subcontracted to a Vectra specialsit by our local Vauxhall dealer (weird i know, but its only a small dealership), so i didnt really get to see the in's and outs of the process as it was handled at the time by NetworkQ warranty.

I agree about the underbonet checks totally, unforutnalty unless i removed the bumper on a regular basis i wouldnt have seen this one coming

but it has made me much more aware of checking vital systems even more regularly.

Thank god it was only a bush and a pile of dirt .. indeed not another car ...

Got the new parts mostly fitted, so yes the "beast" as you put it allllec will be back soon.. just got to get the bumper mounting bolts back in , reseat the headlights and get the tilt motors on the lights sorted as they really wont like having been removed. Its like some kind of CIA operation with this things onboard computer ....

oh and CAUTION: keep mouth closed when under car... apart from being extremely harmful.. ATF/PAS fluid tastes awful ...

Rgds,
Nomisf