My NA has been very reliable. Possibly 'cause I bought it, drove it for 2 months then called FM and said "sell me everything to do everything, all at once. I paid $3800 for the car and don't want to double it. Here's my credit card number..."
So it's been pretty much a new, 135k mile, 27 year old car.
It grew a PS leak recently. A close look this evening disclosed it's where the rubber return hose from the reservoir joins the long hard line that loops up in front of the radiator. The hard line is quite crusty and rusty in the vicinity of the leak, so my working theory is that it finally rusted through.
It's sort of a bitch to remove and new ones are $116. I can shorten it and hose clamp w/ no barb, or simply bypass it w/ more hose. I have about 4' of nice Russell 3/8" ID Twist-Lok hose, so if the length for heat shedding matters, I could use it. Also, when I replaced the radiator, it came w/ an integrated and unused trans cooler. It would be easy to use it for PS to circumvent the (rusty) trombone tube.
What say y'all?
Do you really want your power steering fluid to be the same temperature as the antifreeze? Getting a small transmission or a power steering cooler might be cheaper and would fit in different place.
Using an oil/water trans cooler for PS (edit: on the return side of the system!) would be massive overkill, but it should work great.
Ian F
MegaDork
4/20/16 5:29 a.m.
If you need a NA power steering rack, I have one (including all of the hoses). Free + shipping. It was a perfectly working unit that came out of a car a local autocrosser converted to a "R". I bought it to possibly install into my 1800ES, but I've decided to go a different route.
I say any additional cooling you can do is a good thing. Miatai can and will boil their PS fluid on a track day.
Depower it according to the FM Tutorial.
Even my track NA that was hammered to the ground with tons of camber and caster and R888s wasn't difficult to drive with it gone.
I think Miatas cavitate and foam their ps fluid, not boil. It'll happen on an autox run.
There's no market for these stock parts from salvage, so I'd pick up a replacement from someone like planet Miata. Should be cheap.
Keeping the fluid cool won't hurt, although if the real issue is foaming, it may be time for a better fluid. I've used a small stacked plate trans cooler as a PS cooler before with success.
I recently removed the power steering plumbing from my rust free NA. I suspect the part you need is sitting on my work bench. Free + shipping. I'll shoot a picture of the stuff this evening if your interested.
In reply to Doc Brown:
Sold!
I need the long, bendy, loopy hard line that runs from rack to reservoir; 32-410C in the diagram below. Email me at motomoron at yah00 dawt kom and I'll PayPal you for shipping and a twelve of whatever you like.
Just make it a non-PS rack. Simple, effective, and cheap.
