I'm about fed up with the PS system in my 4th gen T/A. Two pumps and 3 alternators later I am again stuck with a dying battery. I am considering ripping the PS system and looping the rack until I get ā quality mānual one. Any advice? Thanks!

 

I must be missing something. Not sure how the PS and charging system issues are connected.

 

Pump leaks all over the alt killing it

 

Where is the pump leaking from?

 

The pump itself/reservoir

 

When you say this, do you mean the lower portions of the reservoir/where it meets the pump itself and/or where the fluid line connects to the reservoir, or the reservoir cap? And have you been getting new reservoirs with the new pumps, or just reusing the original?

 

New everything. The leak is from underneath, not the cap.

 

It drips the fluid into the alt and slowly it loses the ability to charge. Moving to a truck alt got me a couple more months longer thān a standard. It same result. I replaced my PS pump maybe a year ago.

 

Perhaps the quality of the replacement pump and reservoir is suspect. Have you considered a good name brand such as Turn One?

 

I have. Though Turn One is very nice stuff, it is pricey for what it does. I can either relocate the alt or delete the ps system in my price range. I was considering moving to a madman manual rack anyway, this will push me toward it when I have some bank and get tired of the hard steering in parking lots. Might as well do the a/c and ABS delete while I am turning a wrench on her.

 

Myth #1 - PS fluid ruins alternators.

If the PS fluid is ruining your alternators, you are getting some really cheap alternators. The wingdings are sealed from contaminants and should be fine. All of our cars have spent years bathing their alternators in P/S fluid drips and road grime. This isn't a new thing.


Did you ever swap the P/S pump and keep the tank? There is a special O-ring to seal the tank to the pump, which you can't get from your local parts or hardware store. Attempting to do this without the proper size O-ring will lead to a certain leak.

What kind of alternators are you putting in? Are they all coming from the same source?

 

^ I would agree that you have some other underlying issue that the PS and alt problems are a symptom of.

something out of line with the pulleys maybe?

how did you determine your ALT was bad in the first place

 

All I know is that the alts always worked great right up until the pump started to leak, then slowly went south. They were tested at a local parts store and wouldt charge. A couple of them were orielly gold something or another, I'd have to look it up. They also refused to replace it due to the PS fluid in it. One of the pump replacements was a tank swap and it did include all the orings that I installed. I'm just tired of tossing money at this trying to fix it and would rather deal with hard steering in parking lots if need be.

 

How long have you had your under drive pulley? Does the install of it fall in line with the start of your problems?

When you tuned the car what did you set your idle rpm for your cam?

Are you having the alt tested because you are having a dead battery or basing this on the output voltage on the dash?

Reason I ask is if you are going to advance or autozone to test the alt, if you don't tell them you are running a 25% under drive pulley the alt will not show in spec because it actually will be spinning at a different speed even if you hit the target rpm like 2000rpm. You need to add the 25% to that rpm and than have the alt tested and it will probably output within spec at the right rpm.

Need to know more about why you think the alt is the issue. The PS and alt maybe unrelated but the alt maybe a combination of low idle speed and your UD pulley

 

I had the ud pulley on for a couple years before this started. I've tied high idles along with low. It eventually drains the battery where it has to be recharged because its not doing its job.

 

hmm have you inspected the connections to the alternator including the four pin connector?

whats the time gap between low batteries and is it possibly a coincidence could something in the system be draining it between drive periods?

hopefully this all doesnt come across as insinuating anything i'm genuinely trying to help just thinking outside the box a bit

the four pin connector is responsible for telling the alternator when to charge (Im just a little fuzzy on the how and why) so it could be related to that as well.

 

Reman alternators are notorious for being garbage out of the box. If you aren't under warranty, you shouldn't be surprised that they are failing.

If the parts store isn't honoring the warranty, that's another problem. The P/X fluid thing is BS. I doubt there is a "fluid contamination" rider on their warranty and even if there is - just unload a can of brake cleaner on the thing before you take it back and they will never know the difference.

 

I might have to try that if I can find the receipt

 

I agree on both counts.

I would suggest going with either a GM reman (these are better quality than the chain parts store re-builds in my experience) or a good name brand new unit, such as Powermaster.

As for the constant PS leaks, if you have replaced the entire pump and reservoir with a new assembly and it's still leaking, then this is a low quality replacement. They didn't leak like this when new off the assembly line, so replacement parts shouldn't be leaking out of the box either. Again, I would go with a higher quality brand, assuming you're sure the leak isn't due to a damaged/deteriorated line or fitting and is definitely coming from the pump itself.

 

I'm thinking of just going to the local pull apart this time to see if they have any 2500hd or escalades to grab one off of this time