Rack and Pinion took a dump at 21,000 miles!!!

So my truck hit 21,000 miles last week and to celebrate I decided to do an oil change. Well as I look under my hood I find that my power steering reservoir is almost empty. After some quick investigation I find a little bit of fluid around the left boot on my power steering rack. I took my truck to the stealership the next day hoping this would be a quick warranty fix...

Five days later I just picked my truck up from that damn dealership. It took them four days to even move my truck into the garage! Only then, look at it for five minutes and tell me that my warranty is void!!! I guess putting a set of toytec coilovers on your truck set at 2.5 inches is "extreme wear." Then they wanted, and this is for real, $1745 to replace the rack. So I told them FUCK NO... drove over there and had to pay $153 just to get my truck keys back as a "initial shop fee cost". IS THIS LEGAL? Before I left I went in to buy a bottle of powersteering fluid and they gave me a big blue bottle that says "GM ALL PURPOSE POWER STEERING FLUID" WTF??? GM??? Looks like i'll be shopping around for a new rack...

Sorry really pissed

 

subed for hearing what other people will say

 

Well...I guess possible that the lift over-taxed your steering rack- And if it's not covered under warranty you would need to pay. I would get a second opinion tho...Not sure why a lift would crap out a steering rack....

Who cares where the fluid comes from?? It's all the same stuff unless you were using super high performance something or other.

 

We use GM coolant too. Sucks you gotta fix it though.

 

I fail to see how a 2.5" lift is extreme wear for the power steering rack. Sounds like you should threaten legal action against them with the mangusen moss act.

If it was tie rod bushings or something.... then they may have a case. Leaking rack... I really can't see it. I'd try another dealer first though.

 

I'm not worried about the fluid being bad, any dextron III should work. Its just why would Toyota sell GM fluid?

And even if i try another dealership, all of them on island want $150 to just look at it, and if its not covered by my warranty in there opinion I gotta pay that B.S.

 

Well it should be a warranty item. I see you're in hawaii not sure how many dealers you have... might want to try to go through corporate straight up. That is some utter BS unless it's obvious you've wheeled the piss out of it.

 

There's only a few dents and scrapes on my skid plate...

 

If you can set the suspension back to stock height and take it to another dealership.

 

Ask for proof other than looking at the truck and say it's lifted. They have to determine that Lift was the cause. I'll take it up to service manager and if that don't help I'll Take them into the showroom and give the new customer a show!

I don't mess around

 

x2.

 

Mine was bad when I bought my truck brand new in 06 it started making noise from low fluid a few days after bring it home. Had it replaced with just 500 miles on the truck.

 

The original dealership likely already entered into the computer system that it denied the warranty claim because of the lift. The other dealers would see that as soon as they looked up the VIN.

 

make them prove that the lift caused it, if they cant prove it, then they should have to fix it. and none of that he said, she said bs either, hard proof or i would, take it to the showroom floor and get loud! and then call corporate and raise 9 kinds of hell with them too! Eventually you may get what you want and if not at least they know you are pissed!

 

X2

 

My was making a popping noise so i took it by toyota and it was covered by warranty. $1500 for a new rack/ tie rod ends/ front diff seals / and new idler pully for the serp. belt. $1700 for all this and a tranny flush. When i picked up the truck they said i owed them 225. I said i am only paying for the trans. flush not the tie rod that the warranty didnt cover. WRONG they said i did void the warranty with the lift and you are lucky we even touched it. So i backed down quickly and payed up. Truck drives great now. On the invoice the new rack was $920 plus $100 for tie rod ends,$240 for labor. So 1700 is high> for just the rack

 

But i had to find a location that wanted to work on the truck and say that it was stock.

 

Had mine go out at 36000 miles. Bought my rack and pinion from a local shop for 350 bucks and did the labor myself--only took close to 8 hours A vital tool to have in this case is the crows foot open ended socket/wrench (google it). If you don't mind getting dirty and hopefully have a friend to help you--you can do this repair yourself. Just a heads up--you're gonna have to loosen the serpentine AND AC compressor to remove one of the two bolts that secures the rack and pinion. If anyone needs help/has questions feel free to PM me.

 

How do you know if your rack and pinion is going bad or has gone bad? Is it pretty obvious because you heard a noise or had fluid leaking?