Re: IML: power steering leak and brake failure. help please 1970

First of all, there should be only 2 hoses to your power steering. One is called the high pressure side and the other the low pressure side. The high pressure side may have blown a hole and sprayed steering fluid (which may actually be automatic transmission fluid used in most of those cars) all over and soaked at least the drivers side disk brake which would have reduced braking by 50% and the steering would also have pulled to the right while braking.

Now I don't know if you have disk brakes or not but probably so if it's a 70 Imperial.

As for your overheating, the power steering fluid being sprayed around probably soaked your fan as well. And its the fan belts that run your water pump for cooling the engine and the belts would be oily and slipping thus not turning the pump nearly as fast to cool the engine.

It is normal for the temperature gauge to go a little higher when you shut off the motor.

Chris

----- Original Message -----

From: TRACY

To: mailing-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Sent: Saturday, December 16, 2006 3:57 PM

Subject: IML: power steering leak and brake failure. help please 1970

Hi all

I would really appreciate some advise with my car probs at the mo, I am a women owner and not really up with allot of mechanical lingo so any help

in easy to understand answers would be great,

ok here's the problem, the power steering was leaking so I took the car to a mechanic and he told me it looked to be the 0 rings so I am

in the process of ordering those, I asked him if it was a major prob and he said no so I just presumed I could drive it carefully till they turned up, well

I kinda knew I shouldn't have but did, when I was at my dads his drive way was a tight squeeze so I turned sharply heard a hissing from the power steering and then

saw fluid and allot of it all over the drive dripping from underneath quite badly, so I sort freaked a bit and hoped line and had a look at the archives so see what the story was with driving it like that and I read it could be a fire hazard which bummed me out but I needed to get the car home which was 45 mins away so I wiped as much fluid off the underneath of the car and drove carefully home, the car also seemed hotter than normal on the temp gage also so I rested it half way home just to be on the safe side, then after resting it I hope in and find my brakes weren't working, allot air sound and no great brakes anymore, there was a bit brake but I had to press really hard to make the car stop so I figured best drive slowly home and luckily no major hills to go down, I read some advice on here about replacing all the power steering hoses and would like to know what they are all called and which ones I should replace, the car has only done 18500 original miles and I think they are all original hoses etc,

I need to know what's happened to my brakes and is it because of the power steering leak or not, and where should the temp gage on a say 45 min drive be when the car is turned off, as it went higher after I stopped driving, I wont be driving it now till it fixed, learnt my lesson, its just hard here as I live in nz and we cannot just get parts from the local shop, most of the stuff we have get from the states.

advice please

Tracy