Stupid Hydro assist question

Mattman347 · Jul 7, 2014

So this weekend I broke the steering shaft off at AOP(right at the steering box :dunno:

) and it left me on the side of the mountain with no way to fix other than getting a new one, luckily O'reilys had one in stock so I was able to get it changed thanks to the help of Pumpkin and Piper :dblthumb:

. Any way, I am wanting to put a hydro assist cylinder and a taped steering box on it to relieve some stress off the pitman/steering box arm. I have a taped box and a small cylinder with fittings and lines in my garage. My question is will my stock power steering pump work for this? Will I need to run a cooler? Do I need a bigger resivour for hydro assist? Im guessing all I need to do is run the lines to the cylinder from the power steering box. Sorry for the newb questions but all I could find is Jeep saginaw crap... :flipoff1:

ranger11 · Jul 7, 2014

If your still running the stock pump Id upgrade with a saginaw from a ford van and then do hydro assist.

TBItoy · Jul 7, 2014

you can try it with the stock pump.

you'll need a hose extension on the filler neck to get extra capacity, and to compensate the fluid differential from using a single ended ram.

Make sure to set your ram up correctly , limit it's travel if necessary, do NOT let the ram keep pushing after the knuckles or steering box bottom out, mechanically limit it.

I've did a Saginaw P pump swap on a few 2.9 Rangers, it requires a bit of fab work, or you can buy the conversion plates from PSC (basically some aluminum plates and counter sunk bolts that convert the Saginaw p pump pattern to the ford 3 bolt)

Definitley run a cooler. Hydro assist heats the fluid up quite a bit by flowing a lot more fluid through the steering box valve than it was designed for.

Mattman347 · Jul 7, 2014

Here is what I have right now. It's a small ram so it's not going to take a bunch of fluids so I might be able to use the stock pump for now with just a hose extension on the top. As far as cooler goes, I have a radiator that has open ports from the auto trans that I'm not using so I am thinking I can rig that up for a ps cooler? I'm guessing I just run the return line through it from the pump/ box right? If anyone has any lines on the brackets I might need to convert to Saginaw pleas let me know!!

TBItoy · Jul 7, 2014

I'd try it with the stock pump first.

The in-radiator cooler will work, but it may make your engine run hotter.

I don't think there are any factory brackets to use a Saginaw pump on a Ford V6.
(there are for 302 and 351s from Econoline vans)