Hydro assist issue...

Wheeld the xj yesterday and had an issue with the steering box. I got it off a member and had to basically redo the seals inside. Rode 3 or 4 days at the crawl with little to no issues. Wheeled one day localy with no issues. Yesterday after a short time on the trail the PS was hit of miss. It would go on and off like a light switch. Stopped and checked it all out and could not see any leaks so we figured the PS pump was about to go. Eventually it died. After a few checks we saw fluid but could nto determine where it was coming from. I finally found fluid leaking from the pitman arm seal. The seal was basically brand new, 5 or 6 days of wheeling on it. I am going to try and get it out in one piece and see what went wrong. Is this common with hydro assist or should I be looking at something else? Maybe I put it in wrong? Also I was going to do some PS pump mods, if I can find the info, will this make this issue more prevalent?

You have to make sure the c-clip that holds the seal in is seated all the way, I had a problem with that once.....

BRIANHO13 said:

You have to make sure the c-clip that holds the seal in is seated all the way, I had a problem with that once.....

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TY I'll keep that in mind, but:
I put some fluid in today and cranked it up to see if I could figure out exactly where it was coming from. All I saw yesterday was a steady drip from the pitman arm. With fluid in it I found a stream coming from the top. So I'll try to get some stuff out of the way so I can see the top of the steering box so I can see what is going on.

Autozone sells uv dye to trace leaks with as well.

It might just be boilng over out of the cap, do you have a cooler on it?

I'm fairly certain it's the top seal where the pitman arm bolts to the box case. When I got this box that seal was not even there. I tried my best to rebuild it from reading on here and the FSM. Either I did something wrong or that seal failed prematurely. I do have a cooler on it. One of those auxilary tranny coollers that advanced and autozone cary.

Found it. Some of the top bolts have loosened and the seal was not tight. I thought it was the adjuster bolt, but once I got the fan out of the way I could see the fluid was not on top of the box just down the side. Lessoned learned, at least take some wrenches and tolls with you even if its a small place to wheel! :looser: