Power Steering/Anti-Lock

[gdanski_z]

Problem started a couple months ago...One hot summer day I was backing out of the driveway and all of a sudden my power steering quit, and the anti-lock light came on at the same time. Drove all summer with no power steering and the light on. Lines are leaking, but no noticeable decrease in fluid in the reservoir. Now that I have everything taken apart on the front end, I can see that the power steering lines are drenched, and its soaked the entire wheel well, engine bay and everything else under it. I also did the hicas delete earlier in the summer and looped the lines in the front to delete the hicas pump. Is the leak causing the power steering to quit? Or is it a speed sensor or both? I dont want to overhaul my power steering if I dont have to, but was also thinking of deleting it. Any ideas on where the problem is coming from specifically?

[ThisIsSparTTa]

Does your speedometer read correctly? If so, its not the speed sensor. The speed sensor goes to the gauge cluster, and the speedometer changes that analog signal into a digital one to feed to the ECU and (optionally) HICAS. Plug in a Consult connector with free ECUTalk software and you can see if the ECU is reading the speed. Also the FSM has connection diagrams between the speedometer over to the electronics that you can check.

[gdanski_z]

It's funny you say speed sensor because very seldomly when I'm driving down the highway my speedometer kicks down the 0 and jumps back up

[ThisIsSparTTa]

That's not good! However, you would still need to do some additional troubleshooting to see if its the speed sensor (on the transmission), gauge cluster, or any of the wiring in between. If the speedometer isn't reading correctly, the ECU, etc will not get a good signal either. There's some diagnostics in the FSM to test the speed sensor. Basically, jack up back of car, and turn wheels by hand with DMM probes on certain connectors.

[t.mcginley.jr]

I would try pulling the connector on the speed sensor, cleaning it out good (especially if there's any corrosion), filling it with some dielectric grease and reseating it to see if that clears up the issues. The ecu uses the speed signal to stiffen up the steering when you're going faster. When it gets a jacked up signal, it can mess with the steering. Most people describe it as you did, the power steering just "goes out".