OK I'm repeating a thread posted a little while back - for context:
As part of the fight to get to the cambelt on my 505 GTi recently I've had to loosen off the power steering pump & remove the veebelt which was nicely soaked in ATF. There's a small but steady drip from the "input" shaft into the pump behind the pulley. I'm now in that dangerous territory of "while I'm here I might as well ....." The backstory to this is that about four years back the local-at-the-time garage discovered a leak from the same place - they removed the pump, stripped it down, and told me they'd replaced an "O ring." Remember thinking at the time that an 'O' ring didn't seem very hi-tech for the job it has to do. Does anyone know if there's a proper lipped seal on the front end of the pump? - better still a reference number?
Thanks,
Rob
As part of the fight to get to the cambelt on my 505 GTi recently I've had to loosen off the power steering pump & remove the veebelt which was nicely soaked in ATF. There's a small but steady drip from the "input" shaft into the pump behind the pulley. I'm now in that dangerous territory of "while I'm here I might as well ....." The backstory to this is that about four years back the local-at-the-time garage discovered a leak from the same place - they removed the pump, stripped it down, and told me they'd replaced an "O ring." Remember thinking at the time that an 'O' ring didn't seem very hi-tech for the job it has to do. Does anyone know if there's a proper lipped seal on the front end of the pump? - better still a reference number?
Thanks,
Rob
Prequel was that for days I've been soaking the periphery of the seal with penetrating fluid. First I reached for my set of "Oil Seal Picks" (seemed like the right thing to do), levering the little pointy end under & beyond the lip and multiple attempts with increasing effort at various points around the circumference produced nothing except the sudden upward release of the pick as the seal tore and the pointy end scribed across the finger of my opposite hand - the cat stood back in amazement as I inflicted the sort of injury on myself that he could only dream of achieving with his razor-sharp flesh-ripping claws.
Don't really know what the recommended approach here would be? other than complete stripdown of the pump and turning the shaft on a lathe for someone with a lot of patience. Ideally you'd find a linishing tool small enough to get in the 7.5mm gap between the seal register and the shaft - dream on. What I did was use a diamond faced 'Hone and Stone' sharpener kit held against the shaft while I turned the shaft by hand. Worked down the grades from 'Medium' to 'Fine' to 'Super Fine' and the shaft is smooth again - OK not mirror-finish but hopefully good enough.