Hi guys,

Girlfriend has been complaining of her car having a load of problems lately, the main one being a burning rubber smell whenever she's stopped anywhere.

She brought the car over today and I took a look. Now I am familiar with Toyotas but not American cars.

Opened the hood and the first thing I noticed was the power steering reservoir was leaking or had overflowed all over the serpentine belt. The pulley right by the reservoir was coated in oil as was the belt. The belt also looked a little loose too.

The engine is a V6 but I couldn't tell you the exact sub-model of Malibu, sorry.

The steering also cracks, pops and creaks at low speed maneuvering through the parking lot etc. The car also pulls to one side or another when you let go of the wheel.

It also wants to shake itself apart at 40MPH and above.

The latter sounds like an alignment issue (she drives it like it was stolen) but the steering I've googled and sounds like its a known issue. Anyone know about the over flowing power steering res?

I may just pick up a Haynes manual for the car and work my way through it. She never does any maintenence on the car. It's about 3000 miles overdue for an oil change *slaps forehead*.

Any thoughts guys? I just did a timing belt job on my own 1994 Camry so I'm not afraid of getting stuck into her car, but only if I can do the job pretty quickly. I don't feel comfortable with her using the car much - she drives probably 100 miles a day for work as well as having the kids in there too sometimes.

Edit: Aside from other issues, she told me the car overheated at some point during its life too, and now in order to keep the engine temperature down she has to have the AC on the whole time - I figured this was a fan issue. The AC in my Toyo has a seperate cooling fan that turns on with the AC - If the Malibu is the same then I imagine the primary cooling fan is toast, or the control circuit is.
Thanks in advance,
Dave (NW Indiana)