aypues

I went to a new dealer today for service and she said everything checked out except my power steering looked dark and needed to be changed for $160. Is this right? Does it even need to be changed if its dark? Thx

ancdmd

Rip off. I you wanna change it just get Mobil 1 synthetic ATF and a turkey baster, suck out what's in the reservoir and replace with fresh fluid. Start the car and repeat a handful of times until the reservoir fluid stays bright red. Very easy to do.

writes123

simple drain and fill. take a syringe with a short piece of tubing. and suck out all the ps fluid from the reservoir then add new ATF fluid. I used Mobil 1 ATF synthetic fluid. if it's real dirty, I do this procedure on a regular interval, say 3k, till the fluid stays like the fresh fluid.

writes123

beat me to it. you're a faster poster.

Jabberwock

Like previous poster have said this is a super easy DIY - just be sure to use good quality ATF fluid per the manual. Suck out the old dark fluid from PS reservoir and refill, drive the LS around for a little, and repeat a couple of times until the fluid starts to show nice red color again. It is not necessary to totally flush the system in most cases so a few PS drain and fills maybe every other year will preserve the entire PS system.

jayclapp

I also found this to be easy. I did find that the fluid was not as dark as it appeared when just looking at the reservoir from the outside. As the fluid level was dropped I noticed that the reservoir had taken a darkening on the inside surface, making to fluid look darker than it actually was.

I captured the first fluid removed in a clear plastic water bottle and labeled it as No. 1. By doing this each time you can just line the botles up in a row and see how much the fluid color has changed. Then you know when to stop the procedure and be satisfied with your results.

warminwisc

What is the PS system capacity of fluid? Thanks

writes123

the PS reservoir takes about 1/3 of 1 quart. the whole system = i'm not sure.