Power steering going out
 

Finally got to take my new 1988 Convertible out on the road. It drives fine...but about 10 minutes into driving the power steering went out. I parked it at the gym. An hour or so later I drove it home...same thing. Power steering cuts off about halfway through my drive.

Any ideas???

Check your fluid?

Yep it's full.

Might be time for a replacement PS pump. Mine went out after about 340k miles. Symptoms were similar to yours until one morning when the pump locked-up. FC3S PS pumps aren't easy to come by. Many auto parts stores don't have cores to rebuild so they want your pump in advance and will rebuild. Try searching the junk yards.

They're very easy to come across here on the forum. All us real men go to a depowered or manual rack :cool:

The power steering on the FC is horrible anyway. Hyper sensitive at any real speed, and provides no road feedback.

I've found the opposite actually. It is plush in the parking lot and once at speed it becomes nice and firm. As power steering goes, the Rx7 power steering is pretty good.

Just my experience though, I'm sure a manual rack would be superior.

I'm not a real man yet...I need to learn about the manual option.

I've considered a newly rebuilt manual rack, but one of the u-clamps are smaller than for power rack and no longer available from Mazda. I've had an 86 Sport with manual rack and parking wasn't fun.

Yea mine feels very smooth...when it's working lol.

I too disagree with what most people say about the FC steering setup.. But it also depends on what rack you have. I intentionally sought out the fastest ratio three port rack and retained the speed sensing variable assist. I find that the ratio gives incredible 'flickability', and is unmatched for dodging potholes, bits of road debris, and small woodland creatures... I also disagree that the steering provides no feel. I mean, it's nothing compared to some other cars, but it's more than adequate at communicating what is happening underneath you.

Of course it can be a little twitchy depending on what your alignment settings are like and how poor the road is maintained.

Ya..."Man you all" need to drop the power steering...!:scratch:(man-u-al ..get it?)

Manual steering is no so hot for fast maneuvering in the parking lot but when you get out on the highway the car feels like it is on rails..Great steering feel.

By the way have you checked your belt tension?

Lol clever.

I have not checked belt tension yet. We did find that something keeps grounding out in this ridiculous rat nest of wires tangled up lol. When they move just the right way all of my power seems to cut out then back on. So we are thinking maybe that could be resetting the pump?

We are just going to have to walk our wayou through this nightmare of entangled wires lol.

These cars have a pretty "sophisticated" power steering system. The computer that controlls the "tandem pump" uses signals from a number of sensors including a speed sensor in the speedometer to decide what amount of assistance is necessary.

The computer for this system is located forward and above the driver's front dash speaker on coupes (not sure about verts.) It has a self diagnostic system with a buzzer that will sound a certain sequence of beeps depending on what's wrong with the system. Mine had a lazy speed sensor. It would take a minute to get power back after speeds above 55mph... I went manual eventually, but it's a very nice power steering system for what it is.

Thanks for the info - one more item I need to look at now!

Actually, FC3S uses two different PS systems depending the on model. The TII and GTUs models use vehicle speed sensing PS system. I believe the 88 GTU model also uses vehicle speed sensing PS system. I assume these systems rely on some sort of speed sensor in the speedometer. All the other models use engine speed sensing PS system. I'm not sure where the engine speed sensing system gets it's input signal.

The engine speed sensing system just uses a bypass valve within the pump itself. It actually sucks quite frankly, because it feels good in the parking lot but gets squishy on the highway.

There were two and three port racks. The two port racks suck because they can go dead at the on-center change over from one direction to the other if done very quickly.

The s4's used the three port rack and we're vehicle speed sensing.

The s5's used the two port racks and we're engine speed sensing, which is somewhat less desirable in certain situations.

I believe the S5 turbos were a mixed bag between two or three port on the initial series changeover, but my memory is a little fuzzy. Also from memory, the s5 lower models all used the engine speed sensing two port racks for cost purposes.

That being said, there were three ratios of racks available.

S5's used either 2 or 3 port racks depending on model. The TII and GTUs models used the 3 port rack and all other models used the 2 port rack.