SAAB power steering hose replacement

SAAB power steering hose replacement

Last week I had a SAAB 9000 in the shop for a severely leaking power steering hose. The amount of oil it was putting on the exhaust system was scaring me. The pressure hose had aneurisms all along it. Even the return hose was leaking some.

The owner had put off replacing the hose for two reasons. 1) There was no source for new replacement hoses and 2) the hoses are really hard to get to.

He recently found both hoses on a donor car at the Pull A part yard and removed them. The transmission was out of the donor car making them more accessible in the junk yard.

Like many pressure hoses, the end at the pump is 5/8 and the end at the steering box is 18mm. The return hose is 5/8 at the box and a hose clamp at the reservoir.

We reached the hose by lifting the car and removing the front wheels. The hose end are easy to see through the wheel wells but still difficult to access. I used a crow foot line breaking wrench to break loose the hose ends and then used an open end wrench to take the out the rest of the way, The limited access meant flipping the wrench for each turn.

The hardest part of the job was removing the torx bolt that held the center line clamp. It was a T20. It is in a bit of an angle and impossible to see and reach at the same time. Once the clamp was loose we fed the old line out through the driver side wheel well. We then fished in the replacement lines and reconnect the ends. We then reconnected the center clamp.

I would have preferred to replace the O rings on the ends but we did not have spares and the old ones looked good. They sealed fine.

It was nice for my friend to visit the shop without leaving a pool of fluid. And the lack of scary smoke each time he stopped was a nice bonus as well.