For about a month I've noticed that my car makes a loud groaning noise when turning. The above video demonstrates the problem, but the noise is quite a bit louder. It's especially bad at lower speeds.
So, any idea what this is and how much it'll cost to fix it?
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Edited by A Good Troll: 5/2/2013 1:38:51 PMPower steering fluid, in general, rarely needs changing and old fluid by itself doesn't cause noise - if it was ran low, you might have hurt the pump which could cause noise, but you should be able to tell that by checking fluid level. Most manufacturers don't even recommend changing it in the maintenence manuals because it generally lasts the life of the car. Granted, yours is old, but if I were you I wouldn't expect just changing the fluid to solve the problem. But it is cheap, so a good place to start. You can save money on changing your power steering fluid by drawing it out with a syringe out of the reservoir if you don't have the tools to do a proper flush. Buy the proper fluid and open the reservoir cap on your power steering. Draw out old fluid with a syringe, discard, and put in new fluid. Drive the car for a day and rinse/repeat. Power steering systems generally have a bout a quart of capacity, so once you change a little over a quart or so using this method you can be fairly sure you got most of the old fluid out.