Power steering.. please help

[shdw on th sun]

Sooo... the high pressure power steering hose apparently bursts on almost all gen 5 and 5.5 maximas.. mine made it 160k.

Week ago, start the car, power steering pump whines. Reservoir is empty. Weird. Fill it back up, drive it all week, 300 city miles, no drop in fluid level . The pump seems to be working just fine, the car steers nice and smoothly. The foam sheathing is full of fluid when i pull it back about 8 inches. I noticed it was burst today when I got home to peep my sweet new exhaust leak.

My questions are: Why is the fluid level staying the same? Shouldn't it be pumping this fluid out at a crazy rate? Aaaand I don't feel comfortable doing this repair in such tight spaces, would anyone like to do it or recommend a shop?

[Kisor]

Its a seep, those hoses become porous and are slow to leak.

And +1 on not really a driveway job, its messy and they are tight.

[shdw on th sun]

Originally Posted by Kisor

Its a seep, those hoses become porous and are slow to leak.

And +1 on not really a driveway job, its messy and they are tight.

Thanks for the reply, Kisor.

Interesting. And yeah, I'm prone to get pissed and start forcing shit after a couple hours so I'm not going to tackle this one. How long, realistically, would you guess I can drive the car before the low pressure does damage, if any? I don't care if people can see everywhere I've been lol. I can't have my car down for however long it's going to take to get fixed at the moment, and I don't have 7 of them like some of these cats.

[Kisor]

As long as there is fluid in the system it will be fine. Those hose seeps wont affect the pressure unless they split and it all runs out leaving the system dry.

Let me look up price/time on replacing the hose. What year is it? And SL or SE?

Edit: Looks like the hose is a little pricey, $76 shipped from www.rockauto.com

[shdw on th sun]

Originally Posted by Kisor

As long as there is fluid in the system it will be fine. Those hose seeps wont affect the pressure unless they split and it all runs out leaving the system dry.

Let me look up price/time on replacing the hose. What year is it? And SL or SE?

I'm checking it every time I drive the car, and as I said *for now* the level hasn't dropped in about a week.

And thanks for looking into details on repair, that would be stellar. 02 SE. VQ35DE 6MT.