Uintah

A few years back I replaced the control valve and ram with new units and rebuilt my ps pump. After that I had no power assist.

I thought I might have rebuilt the pump so replaced it with a rebuilt unit. Still no power assist. Rebalanced the control valve and ram worked perfectly.

Reinstalled my old control valve and now I have power steering. When I tried to balance the control valve the ram would extend fine, but would not retract all the way. When I tried to retract the rod it would almost kill the engine.

Drove the car and right tuns are okay, but left turns (retracting the ram rod) almost kill the engine. Besides the fact my car hates me, any mechanical ideas?

Uintah

MelWff

At the end of your second sentence you stated the ram worked perfectly.
Your third sentence starts with you reinstalled the old valve and have power steering but you adjusted the valve and would not retract.
Why did you reinstall the old valve?

Uintah

The ram worked perfectly, but I had no power assist when driving. I wanted to see if the new control valve was defective.

Something else I did when installing the old control valve again was filling the ball stud side full of grease before bolting it on. It seemed to take a lot. Could to much grease not be allowing the internal parts of the valve to travel left to right freely?

Uintah

MelWff

So why didnt you put the new valve on?

Uintah

I installed the new valve years ago, which caused me to loose my power assist. I just didn't get around to trying to remedy the problem until now. Originally the old valve had no issues, but I wanted to replace the old parts all at the same time, that was a bad idea.

Uintah

7T1vette

The "new" control valve apparently had 'problems' in it. Even though a part has been recently purchased is no guarantee that it works as it should...especially when they are 'rebuilds'. Your 'old' control valve also has problems.

My suggestion to you is to buy an inexpensive rebuild kit for your original control valve and rebuild it yourself. Jim_Shea (member on this Forum) has several detailed instruction documents on rebuilding the various components of the C3 Power Steering system. These are free and are online; you can download them for reference when you do the rebuilding.

Once you have rebuilt your old unit, you can disassemble the "new" one to find out what the re-manufacturer messed-up before sending to your vendor. You may be able to repair it and sell it on eBay or to another member of this Forum.

Good luck.

wombvette

Actually sounds like a ram problem, but you should never put that much grease in the ball. If any just a little. Wen you fill it like you did the grease goes into the fluid valve.

Uintah

If it got into the fluid valve, could it plug up some of the passages in the control valve and piston? If so would there be a way to flush the system on the vehicle?