Buggy Power Steering issue

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This last weekend in the dunes, my Power Steering started to fade. At low idle, I pretty much had no power steering, once I gave the engine some throttle, no issues. So driving wasn't really an issue.

So my questions, would this be the Pump, Rack or just bad fluid. I have never changed the fluid (10 years), rack is a Funco Gen 4 rack, and the pump is Howe.

Just looking for direction to start..............
 
clearly you need to check fluid level first, hopefully its not black! you should check that first. if black, flush and change fluid out most likely the pump but there are some external tricks you can try too--pics help regardless
 
my problem I chased for a while was I had a block of foam in the reservoir, and it would heavily restrict the flow out of the resi, and to the pump causing no ps. Didn’t have the foam disintegrating or anything , just restricted the flow. Pulled it out and problem was solved
 
John@Outfront said:
clearly you need to check fluid level first, hopefully its not black! you should check that first. if black, flush and change fluid out most likely the pump but there are some external tricks you can try too--pics help regardless
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Level is good, but it is black. When I first noticed it, we were in some super soft untracked smaller dunes and I was making lots of turns and not at speed. My first thought was over-heating the system?

I will change the fluid, can't hurt. Thanks
 
I don't think you can get it hot enough in a buggy. Not a lot of load, and the lines are super long for a lot of volume/heat dissipation.

Check the screen in the reservoir for shit. Change the fluid (burp it by moving the wheel back forth a gazillion times while keeping the reservoir topped up). If it persists, I'd assume your pump isn't happy.
 
then there is a valve inside the pump that you can service externally, it can be affected by sand this will probably be the next step but first try the fluid then let us know
 
It might be the grease in the rack, if you haven't kept it greased it will be hard to turn at idle cause the grease is hard and clogging things up.
 
May be the beginning of the rack going out. Specifically the spool valve. When my rack would start acting up it would do the same then eventually start locking up. Grant can get the racks rebuilt. I would flush all the fluids now, couple times to clean the system and hoses. See if that helps. Then if the racks coming off, at least you have a clean system to install back.
 
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