When diagnosing leaking power steering fluids the local filling station told me that I needed to replace the "Power Steering Rack". I have looked on Zip's site at the diagrams of power steering components and can't find what the "Rack" is. Anyone?

 

Unless your car has an aftermarket rack and pinion steering system installed in it then you don't have a "power steering rack".
You might want to avoid asking your local filling station any more vette questions.

Can you see where the fluid is dripping from? If you can describe where the leaks are coming from someone here should be able to point you in the right direction.

 

C3s did not have rack and pinion steering. Find a shop that knows what they are talking about.

 

Along slightly more constructive lines (not that the other comments weren't constructive, finding a good shop is sound advice), the tech may have mistaken your control valve for a rack... I'd recommend getting a service manual and crawling under to see what's leaking and then look it up in the manual or take a picture and I or someone else will tell you what it is...

 

Crawling under is the problem. I don't have a concrete place to jack the car up, so I resorted to a shop for this one. I can drive the car up on ramps and then crawl under. I will try to take a pic, but last I checked there was so much leak you couldn't tell WHERE it was coming from. Someone had suggested I clean it all off and then use talc powder or something to see where the leak really starts. I will try to clean it all off, and take her for a spin and take a pic afterwards.

 

Ping, take it to Larry or Tony along with everything else....no other choices....

IF you truly have a rack in that car, you got one of maybe as many as 2000 in existance, as it was converted over via a kit .....out of 400,000 sharks around....I"d say you don't have a rack....you do have a power assist piston, hhung onto an olde style recirculating ball /drag link setup.....

GENE

 

Your leak can only be coming from 4 parts: The power steering pump, the power steering control valve, the power steering ram (sometimes called the piston), or the hoses.
There are 4 hoses;
1. pressure hose between the pump and the control valve ( has fittings on both ends)
2. return hose between the pump and the control valve (fitting on the control valve end, hose clamp at the pump)
3, and 4. Pressure hoses between the control valve and the ram.

This illistration shows everything except the pump and it's hoses.

 

Tomorrow morning I'm going to get under it with the camera so I can send in some pics. That was the diagram I saw on zip's site but I just don't know enough to understand what it means.

 

Here are a few pictures I took of the power steering area this morning. I got them loaded up into Gallery so you can see them in as much or as little detail as you want. Keep clicking and you can get a rather large shot of one of the pics. Here's the damage...

http://www.carsonevans.com/vette/gal...erSteeringLeak

 

yep, you've got a leak. I think you need to clean it before you can determine where the leak is coming from. Also check your balancer to make sure it's dry, if not the your leak could be the engine and not the PS system. :cheers:

 

Great pics :thumbs:
Nasty mess!! :U

That is bone stock C-3 power steering, DO NOT under any circumstances take your car back to the place that tried to sell you a new "rack" to fix your leak! They obviously don't know jack about corvettes.

Unfortunately all of your power steering components are so gunked up that it is hard to tell where the fluid is coming from, it looks like every components has a leak.

Drive that sucker to the car wash and spray wash as much of that gunk off of there as you can get at (take knee pads and wear old clothes), when you get home jack it up wipe down everything the car wash couldn't get to. Fill the power steering pump and drive the car around the block a few times. Jack it back up and see if you can pinpoint the origin of the leak(s).
If you need help id'ing the bad components take a some more pics that show where the leaks are coming from.

The worst case cenario is that you will need to replace everything (pump, hoses, control valve, ram), but the parts can be had for less than your shop was going to charge you for the valve cover gaskets and you should be able to do the work yourself without much trouble.

 

Given the fact that it is bone stock, wouldn't a complete replacement be a good idea anyway? It'd give me a better understanding of how the whole sterring thing works anyway.

I'll try to clean that crap off. Do you think a degreaser of some kind might do the trick?