jangoforhire
New member
This was definitely a mistake on my end, but everyone who's installed the hidden winch plate should check this as well.
I was making a quick trip home from college Thursday night and ended up getting caught in a huge traffic jam on I-83 coming out of southern PA (there was an 11 car pile up that closed both north and south bound lanes for several hours). I got off of the highway and attempted to make it home through some backroads but ended up sitting there just as long. After I had been sitting for about 90 minutes a passing truck driver caught my attention and said I was blowing anti-freeze all over the road. There was no way I could pull off on the section of road where I was so I checked all my gauges (temp was fine), no warning lights, couldn't see any fluid leaking in the rearview cam, I even pulled out my OBDII cord from the center console and used my iPhone to run the codes while I was sitting in traffic just to see what was up. Everything seemed fine so I was crawling in traffic for another 15 minutes. I didn't notice what was wrong until the traffic cleared about 10 minutes later and I had to make my first turn, sure enough my power steering was toast.
I pulled over the check under the hood and the reservoir was empty. I didn't see any obvious leaks so I drove to a close auto shop and got some fluid to refill it. After it was full I turned the car back on and watched the fluid blow out completely under the driver side headlight. After that
I knew exactly what it was. Against my better judgement I drove the 10miles home on a dry pump to get to my workshop and found this:
This is from when I bent the pipe back for the winch to be installed. I knew the drivers side was a little tight, but thought it should be fine. Apparently this stressed it enough that it eventually gave way.
Here is a before and after shot of the pipe and hose where it broke when I was installing the winch plate.
BEFORE - Here you can see it isn't stressed at all:
AFTER - You can see I have introduced an unnecessary bend in the hose by bending the pipe back, and this is where it failed - I should have bent the pipe a little and made sure the hose wasn't as stressed:
I made it to our local hardware store about 10 minutes before they closed and picked up a replacement. I got a longer hose so it would reduce stress on the hard bend where it failed before. It was a pretty quick fix and I managed to get the old one off and the new one on without even dropping the bumper. Took about an hour total. When I refiled the system it drank a good amount of PS fluid before it leveled off. After it did level off I had a nice screech coming from the PS pump (under the air intake) that lasted for about 10 minutes. I was worried that I burned out the bump by driving about 15 miles with an empty system. The noise eventually went away and it was been normal ever since.
I was making a quick trip home from college Thursday night and ended up getting caught in a huge traffic jam on I-83 coming out of southern PA (there was an 11 car pile up that closed both north and south bound lanes for several hours). I got off of the highway and attempted to make it home through some backroads but ended up sitting there just as long. After I had been sitting for about 90 minutes a passing truck driver caught my attention and said I was blowing anti-freeze all over the road. There was no way I could pull off on the section of road where I was so I checked all my gauges (temp was fine), no warning lights, couldn't see any fluid leaking in the rearview cam, I even pulled out my OBDII cord from the center console and used my iPhone to run the codes while I was sitting in traffic just to see what was up. Everything seemed fine so I was crawling in traffic for another 15 minutes. I didn't notice what was wrong until the traffic cleared about 10 minutes later and I had to make my first turn, sure enough my power steering was toast.
I pulled over the check under the hood and the reservoir was empty. I didn't see any obvious leaks so I drove to a close auto shop and got some fluid to refill it. After it was full I turned the car back on and watched the fluid blow out completely under the driver side headlight. After that
I knew exactly what it was. Against my better judgement I drove the 10miles home on a dry pump to get to my workshop and found this:
This is from when I bent the pipe back for the winch to be installed. I knew the drivers side was a little tight, but thought it should be fine. Apparently this stressed it enough that it eventually gave way.
Here is a before and after shot of the pipe and hose where it broke when I was installing the winch plate.
BEFORE - Here you can see it isn't stressed at all:
AFTER - You can see I have introduced an unnecessary bend in the hose by bending the pipe back, and this is where it failed - I should have bent the pipe a little and made sure the hose wasn't as stressed:
I made it to our local hardware store about 10 minutes before they closed and picked up a replacement. I got a longer hose so it would reduce stress on the hard bend where it failed before. It was a pretty quick fix and I managed to get the old one off and the new one on without even dropping the bumper. Took about an hour total. When I refiled the system it drank a good amount of PS fluid before it leveled off. After it did level off I had a nice screech coming from the PS pump (under the air intake) that lasted for about 10 minutes. I was worried that I burned out the bump by driving about 15 miles with an empty system. The noise eventually went away and it was been normal ever since.
