power steering rubber hoses

A couple of my power steering rubber hoses show several radial cracks
on the lining, the braid and outer layer are fine. The radial cracks
extend along the hose by about 4mm, the hose is otherwise pliable,
fine. The fluid is ATF, I use Redline D4 ATF as just £2/litre more
that generic at a supermarket oddly.

OEM hoses are moulded to shape.
Off the shelf Samco silicone hoses are a set diameter and flexible
straight lengths. For this application the flexible straight lengths
would be fine - albeit blue.

I could just cut off the bad section (4mm) or I could just use an off
the shelf flexible length.

I take it there is no problem with using such off the shelf flexible
silicone hoses?

They are running to & from "steel elbow-to-elbow" on the car body
around the front suspension turret so not likely to flap into anything
important. Bring back the go-kart with string steering... oh wall
street already is... ok...

"js.b1" > wrote in message
...
A couple of my power steering rubber hoses show several radial cracks
on the lining, the braid and outer layer are fine. The radial cracks
extend along the hose by about 4mm, the hose is otherwise pliable,
fine. The fluid is ATF, I use Redline D4 ATF as just £2/litre more
that generic at a supermarket oddly.

OEM hoses are moulded to shape.
Off the shelf Samco silicone hoses are a set diameter and flexible
straight lengths. For this application the flexible straight lengths
would be fine - albeit blue.

I could just cut off the bad section (4mm) or I could just use an off
the shelf flexible length.

I take it there is no problem with using such off the shelf flexible
silicone hoses?

They are running to & from "steel elbow-to-elbow" on the car body
around the front suspension turret so not likely to flap into anything
important. Bring back the go-kart with string steering... oh wall
street already is... ok...

*******
I pulled up the Samco catalog out of curiosity, but of course
I dont know what your car IS...
When I checked Ford products, there were a number of kits
but most or all I scanned for were for cooling systems, not
power steering systems. Maybe I got in the wrong place.

Silicone has its applications, but I dont know if power steering
is one of them. It is not the be all/end all of elastomers.

If I had your present hoses, and wanted to fix something that
is not yet broken, I might take them down to the
auto parts shop and have them cut off a half inch or so of the
cracked rubber end, and swage/press a new fitting on . I
could probably get this done for US$10 or so.

If I had some more esoteric goal, I would probably just buy
a set of hoses from the local FLAPS, or have them make me
a set, or buy OEM from a local supplier.

Nice thing about screwing up power steering hoses, if one
cracks, you lose fluid and your steering gets tough, but you
dont generally lose total control. Well, very weak people do.

js.b1 > wrote:
>OEM hoses are moulded to shape.
>Off the shelf Samco silicone hoses are a set diameter and flexible
>straight lengths. For this application the flexible straight lengths
>would be fine - albeit blue.

The problem with the silicone hoses is that if they are abraded they tend
to fail. Many of them have a heavy overcoat that isn't silicone but once
that is damaged a small scratch will propagate through the hose very quickly.

>I could just cut off the bad section (4mm) or I could just use an off
>the shelf flexible length.

Do you have the tooling to crimp new connectors on?

>I take it there is no problem with using such off the shelf flexible
>silicone hoses?

If you're careful with them, I think they are probably fine, but they cannot
take the kind of abuse neoprene can.

>They are running to & from "steel elbow-to-elbow" on the car body
>around the front suspension turret so not likely to flap into anything
>important. Bring back the go-kart with string steering... oh wall
>street already is... ok...

Hey, my 2002 drives just great with mechanical coupling.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

The car is a Mazda, I should add these are the Low Pressure push-on w/
clip hoses to/from the p/s fluid reservoir - not the High Pressure
with swaged fittings. I know the HP hoses tend to be expensive, but
recall that most hydraulic shops can make them up far more cheaply re-
using the silicone/glass-fibre convoluted heat shields off the old
hoses where applicable.

Looking more closely it looks like I can trim the 4mm off the hose
removing the radially cracked inner section. That does not compromise
the length of hose past the hose joiner bar or the spring clip
location - they were pushed an unusually long way on the metal L-pipe
bolted to the car body (2inch past the barb, over 1inch past the
spring clip). The L-pipe just combines joiner and fix into body-stud
for physical location.

The silicone hoses come in 2 distinct flavours - Oil/Fuel & Coolant/
Air.