Hello fellas. I own an 85 SE and since I'm fairly new in this area in MD it has been
a bit of a challenge to find a power steering pump on a junkyard, don't know my
way around yet.

1st question is where do you find a GOOD pump that will not break down twice in
a year like the one I got from NAPA?

2nd q: When bleeding the system, do I have to raise the front of the car or could
it be done with the tires on the ground?

Any assistance will be appreciated.

 

To answer your first question, the stock pump is, shall we say, problematic. I believe Sun Auto rebuilds them with improvements to eliminate the problem (as I understand it, endplay is conrtrolled by a simple circlip, which fails)

The simplest thing to do is just leave the belt off. It's really not that bad to drive one with the P/S box and no pump - after all, 240/260/280Z with manual steering had a very similar steering ratio as the RX-7 power steering, and they're similar in weight. This is how my GSL is currently - the pump started screaming one day, all the fluid had been forced out of the dipstick tube. Refilled it and all the the fluid was puked back up within two miles. Took the belt off and it's been that way since.

If you want to be elegant, remove the pump and connect the two hoses coming from the box together. You cannot just block off the fittings at the box.

 

I took off my power steering belt and I didnt like it. The first few drives werent that bad, but it really sucked to drive around when I was tired. If its not a daily driver I would get rid of the pump, but otherwise I would just get it rebuilt like peejay said.

 

Thanks for your assistance guys. I'll go and jump on the car tomorrow.
Owe you one.