Now that it has turned colder, 50 degrees or so, my car makes an awful noise when I turn it on in the morning. I believe it is linked to the power steering somehow. It makes the noise regardless of whether I am turning the wheel or not, but when I turn the wheel, it makes an even louder noise. After I let the car warm up for about 10-15 minutes and the engine gets up to operating temperature, the sound goes away, and as long as the temperature stays over 50 degrees it does not come back. Since I live 20-30 minutes from the dealer, there was no way for me to re-produce the sounds for them, because the sound was always gone by the time I could get there. So I took my high tech camera and video'd the problem in high definition and took it to them, but they refused to help. They said the only thing they could do is for me to leave it overnight and they would look at it in the morning. Well that is nearly impossible for me to do given I have to take kids to school etc. The shop foreman who looked at it, said best guess was that it was the power steering pump, and it would need to be replaced. Total price is nearly 700 dollars. I am not at all car inclined, but am very mechanically inclined, so if I can figure out what is wrong, I will attempt to do the repair myself.
I saw a previous post on here mentioning something about just replacing the O-ring. I'm not sure that this is the same issue. The fluids are fine, just had oil changed 2 days ago and was told all fluid levels are topped off.
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Friday, December 4th, 2009 AT 9:34 PM