I have had a leak in the rack and pinion for a little while. It would slightly whine when low but as soon as I put fluid in it would go away and be fine. Today it started making noise and it was making a lot, so I checked fluid and it was still full. I drove it for about a block before smoke started pouring out the hood so I checked and there was power steering fluid all over around the reservoir. It was smoking from getting on the exhaust manifold. Even after all the fluid was all over the engine bay there was still fluid in the reservoir. what parts could have failed? Any advice?
Oh yuck. That is hard to say. You only need the smallest amount of fluid to hit the exhaust and your going to get lots of smoke. So its hard to say it isn’t your rack. You can loose more than enough to make smoke come out and never notice in the reservoir.
You almost have to clean off the fluid make sure its power steering fluid and then start looking for the leak. Is the smoke more on the driver or passenger side.
Well the original leak was passenger side rack, know that for a fact, then it came out of the driver side yesterday and its almost like the reservoir backed up with how the fluid was all over the reservoir and engine but it was quite a bit of fluid.