The power steering on my 99 Silverado (120k) has completely failed. It takes a ton of effort to turn the wheel an inch. Still has plenty of fluid in the resevoir and the pulley is spinning fine. Any way to confirm it is the pump before I replace it?

I don't know if this is related but it was working fine one day and I was using it to put tension on a rope in order to help cut down some trees (in reverse with wheels turned). Shut the truck off for a bit and then when I started it up again, no p/s.

Everything else works as far as I can tell, but I can only drive it about 2mph because it is impossible to turn the wheel. Any advice appreciated. Thanks.

 

You may have bent the control valve in the rack by putting that much pressure on it for so long. Could also be the pump itself. To test you'd need a pressure gauge

 

Thanks for the reply. The bent control valve theory sounds interesting based on what we were doing with the truck before it broke. I can't find any reference to a control valve in my Haynes Book.Is the control valve part of the pump assembly? How can I verify if this is what it is and how do you repair/replace? If it's part of the pump, I assume I should just replace hte whole thing.

 

Sounds like the pump shaft is broken, shut the truck off and try to pry the pulley away if it starts to move alot then you know the problem

 

Did a little digging, You don't have a rack, you have a gear box with the old parallelogram steering. you really need to get a pressure gauge to make an educated decision on what is bad

 

Went to pull the power steering pump off and the pulley came right off...with the stub of snapped shaft. That answers that. Thanks for the help guys.

BTW, what a PITA to get that pump out of there. It always amazes me how the manufacturer designs stuff with so little clearance to remove.

 

At least you didnt have to pull pulley! Good call KTM. I have seen several of these do that. I like how it doesnt leak.