On my 64 el camino the power steering pump And box Have been leaking for a very long time. I bought A new steering box and pump from opgi. The box Is advertised as a modern feel box and is a little quicker ratio. I've installed this box on other customers Cars, and it's pretty nice. The problem I'm having is When I get in And fire the car up the power steering does not work But after trying to turn the wheel really hard It finally kicks in, but it's hard to turn like very little assist. The box itself is a new delphi , but the pump is remanufactured. Does this sound like anything familiar as in the box is bad or the pump's not putting pressure out? Being that i replaced both at the same time I don't know which one's bad.any thoughts?
I have a 442 with PS and years ago I had a box go out and replaced it and rebuilt the pump while I was at it. The new stuff sucks! I took the pump apart twice, added a filter in line, bled it 100 times before figuring out it was the box. I went through 3 off the shelf units before I bought a Red Head box. Like I said, that was years ago and still working fine.
That's the reason I went with the new box Because all the parts store boxes that I've put In other people's cars including mine i had had to replace because they were either loose or leaked.
Had an original box that started leaking real bad but worked fine. Went to the bone yard and pulled one. That one did exactly what you described. So I’m going it’s the box.
Man, that would suck if it's the box cause that thing was expensive and I bought it about a year ago. So I'm sure there's no warranty.
They screw into the side of the pump. You can shim the spring to alter the pressures edit : here https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/power-steering-saginaw-pump-and-box.1236204/
Similar results when I swapped box and pump for remanned units on my OT H/O. Ended up removing valve from back of pump and reinstalling. Turns out rebuilt and even new can have some junk in them and once I put that valve back in it works like a charm.
Make up a line to "T" in a pressure gauge. With the engine running at least 800 rpm, turn the wheel. You should see and immediate rise in pressure. With the steering hard left or hard right, pull hard on the wheel, the pressure gauge should read at least 1000 psi. That will tell you if the problem is the pump or the box.
I swapped out the valve and no change. When I look in the pump I don't see any fluid moving so I think the pump is bad. Usually when you fire it up and it's low You could see fluid moving around pretty good. When I fired this one up The level just went down slowly.
Assuming your P/S box is a Saginaw and you are interested in digging into it, I found this rebuild vid very informative: Pump rebuild: https://www.corvette-restoration.com/2006/08/13/power-steering-pump-rebuild/
Being that I didn't see any fluid moving I got another rebuilt pump from the parts store. It all worked Out and the steering is good again. The steering is easy and it hasn't been hard at first start yet. We will see in the morning when it's 25° out what it does.
If it is really cold and you have a vane type pump, that could be normal. The vane type pumps rely on centrifugal force to move the vanes out. When the fluid is very cold it takes a bit for them to come in contact with the housing and begin pumping. I lived in Illinois and on really cold winter days every 60's model Ford product did this.
All of the early with a can Saginaw pumps are vane pumps. Reseal kits for them aren't spendy and they aren't hard to rebuild. The vanes could be sticking in the rotor though. On a used pump that doesn't work right and makes noise normally the pressure plate and Trust plate 11 and 16 get alled from the rotor and vanes spinnning against them when the pump runs dry.
The Jalopy Journal
