I've had my various PS pieces off as well as the hoses and it has pretty much leaked all of the fluid out so I am now putting it all back together.
Can I just fill the reservoir back up with fluid and go or is there a bleeding/priming process in order to get air out and fluid in?

thanks Rob

 

you're supposed to hook everything up and turn the wheels lock to lock a few times to purge the air out...I pushed the ram piston in and out a few times before even attatching it and that seemed to work pretty well. You need to have the ram disconnected from the frame to balance the valve anyway.

 

With everything back together, jack the front wheels up a bit to get the load off and make it easier to turn the wheel. Fill the resouvoir then turn the wheels from lock to lock a few times (engine off) to get the air out.

 

Not sure what you mean by this part. Can you elaborate?

thanks

 

you want to bleed out as much of the air as possible to prevent the fluid from foaming up in the system, that is the answer to your original question and the common way to do this is to hook everything up and turn the steering wheel lock to lock to work the air out. All this is really doing though is pushing the steering ram in and out to its limits, and since it is at the bottom of the system, this will push the air out of the cylinder so it can make its way up to the reservoir. Unless you are really lucky, you will probably need to balance the control valve to get the assist equal in both directions, Jim Shea has some great papers on how to do this, but it involves disconnecting the cylinder from the frame so you can see when it starts to move back and forth. All I'm saying is instead of hooking everything back up to turn the wheels back and forth, you can just leave the ram off and push it in and out a few times by hand to work the air out. You still want to check the fluid level again, start the car and let the pump push some fluid around, then check it again, but at this point there should be very little air remaining. Once you have it balanced you can reconnect everything and you're good to go. Hopefully that made things clearer and not more confusing.

 

I agree with the above procedure.

If you just start your engine and rotate the steering wheel lock to lock, you will circulate a lot of air through the power steering pump where it will be whipped into foam by the vanes in the pump. You will then have a milky colored, compressible fluid. Power assist will be erratic and the pump will make a lot of noise because of the foam.

The air will eventually work its way out of the fluid over the next couple days. It is much quicker to work the air out of the system by stroking the components full lock to full lock and refilling the pump reservoir BEFORE starting the engine.

Jim