Full Throttle

"Originally Posted by Monkeyleg
When the power steering goes, it doesn't feel like manual steering. It takes both arms and a good deal of oomph to turn the wheel."

This is true,

I had the power steering fail on my while I was making a right turn in my '97 Saturn. Scared the crap out of me since I was about to hit a car if I didn't make the turn. Luckily, I slowed down enough to avoid the collision. Took a lot of effort to turn the damn wheel.

chain1

Yep and these s197 are fairly heavy up front. If your speed was low enough, I can see how it would feel like the column was locked.

AMoRT

a similar thing happened to my friend in his mazda 3. his steering completely locked and he lost power brakes when he was going down a steep hill but he ended up actually crashing through the front windows of a hotel... he wasn't as lucky as you

raredesign

Status update: All has been fine lately. Not one occurance since then. It must have been oil dropped on the belt when the filter was pulled.

Kotobuki

Out of curiosity, do you have a manual or automatic? I had a little trouble recently that included occasional loss of steering. It might be something similar.

raredesign

Sorry bro, I know this is super old, but I didn't get the email about the reply.
I have a manual, and have not had any other occurrences.

Recon111

there is a pressurized valve in the pump that was staying open causing the steering to be tough at low rpm. it opens at higher RPM, Your's might have stuck open.

I know this is old, I just wanted to throw an idea out there , just in case.

grabber blue gt

never mind just realized he brought up a thread thats older than my car ^^^^

wayne613

Is the pump loud (feel/sound like it's straining) at all when trying to say turn the wheel to the extremes coming out of a parking space?

My pump was dieing, not like this of course, but I had to take it into the dealer twice to show them before they finally replaced it. Great that everything turned out ok, and all is well now, but even with slipping that sounds odd. And I'm sure you'd wish to take care of it under warranty should something be truly amiss. I am certainly not any mechanical expert either.

Mine would probably have kept going indefinitely, just sucking badly from time to time is why I ask. It was rather intermittent the majority of the time.

07 Stang

So what causes a power steering pump to go bad?