Rack & Pinion Port

The low pressure hose is the one with the constant pressure clamp on it.

 

I'd have to completely agree...I'm planning on putting in a new rack before the end of the year, and I'm definitely getting new hoses, pump, reservoir...going to go all OEM parts. That being said, I'm the king of "while you're in there", so even if it costs me a little more up front, I've found once you crack open something that's been in place over 20 years, they will tend to fail after they've been meddled with and I really hate to go back in and mess with something a second time.

 

I think I about things this way:

The right approach to repairing something comes down to a few things like a person’s time, experience, money, and resources. If I were to strip my crank from the harmonic balancer blowing up, I might as well just get a new engine. That said, guys with the resources and experience can just swap in a new crank and maybe pistons and rods while they’re at it and have a stronger engine when they’re done or just save some money and use stock replacement parts. When it comes to replacing some hose on a truck in the southwest which doesn’t have any poorly done work done to it, it’s no problem for me to replace soft sections of a steering hose with high quality hose and save some money. Anyway, diy will save money as long as it’s done right lol.

 

FTR, I just looked up the price of those hoses, that return hose is cheap, but that pressure hose is anything but, wow!

 

If you pay attention to your truck better than an old lady with cats, saving some money buying aftermarket on something like a power stering hose with a warrantee is fine. If it fails it's not instant death because you know to keep an eye on it once in awhile. And it has a warrantee so you can get it replaced, you just have to take the time to reinstall it. I can understand all the paranoia about ball joints, but being forced to buy OEM steering line seems silly for the reasons I just listed.

 

Yep, exactly. I'm putting in a new engine in my 98 and stopped by the local dealership to get all the part numbers for what I'll be replacing before I do. Even at their online price, the list came out to $2700. There's no way I'll be doing all OEM parts or paying that much. Just have to separate the parts that you really don't want to fail vs. those ones that you wouldn't have a big issue with if they did. Driving is perfectly safe without power steering, so that's definitely not an essential if you need to budget price somewhere.