tjones99
Member
- Joined
- April 8, 2006
- Messages
- 10
- Reaction score
- 0
- City, State
- Toronto, Ontario
- Year, Model & Trim Level
- 1998 Explorer XLT
The steering on my 1995 Explorer recently got very stiff. Stiff to the point my wife could barely drive it. Obvious first thoughts were power steering fluid levels but that was OK. Second thoughts were either power steering pump gone bad or else the rack and pinion rack had gone bad. Wasn't looking forward to the work or the expense of either so I was pondering other possible causes and thought maybe I had seized upper or lower ball joints. I had recently replaced the passenger ball joints so I ruled them out. I decided to search the internet to see if ball joints could cause this sort of symptom. I came across a Volvo forum that talked about this but the author also said to check the u joints in the steering linkage. The Explorer has a set of rubber booted joints just above the rack, below the pump. Diagnosis in this case was to empty half a can of WD40 into the assembly and nearly instantly the car was a dream to drive again. Obviously WD40 isn't the final solution, replacing the joints is, but this saved me a lot of work replacing expensive power steering components trying to resolve the steering problem. Phew! Hope this helps someone else along the way as much as this Explorer forum has helped me!
