I have recently taken the '85 LTD out of the mothballs. Everything, even the old R-12 based A/C is still working and driving it has been fun, except that my beloved toy left a small puddle of steering fluid on the ground, just below the pump. The leak is at the seal between the plastic reservoir and the pressure port fitting. Don't know if newer ones are similar or not (the one on my Explorer sure looks different), but this one is a bit of a puzzling design. The screw-in pressure port has two external O-rings. The smaller one seals the bore with the pressurized fluid, while the larger one is supposed to seals the opening in the reservoir through which the port enters. It's the latter that leaks. It just seems that the port bottoms out in the pump body before the flange at its rear manages to fully compress the larger O-ring. In fact, even when the fitting is seated fully in, 'metal-to-metal', a thin gap is still clearly visible between the plastic reservoir and that O-ring. The reservoir even moves quite freely instead of being snug against the pump body. The opening in the reservoir appears intact, with a nice 45 deg chamfer. A new O-ring of the correct size, taken straight from a seal kit made absolutely no difference. Something is clearly the wrong dimension or distorted, but what? It's such a simple affair... I have been thinking of replacing the pump, but the only ones available are 'remanufactured', and I am afraid to find exactly the same problem after all the hassle involved in separating the A/C compressor, removing and re-installing the pulley, retightening the belts, etc, etc. Worse yet, most of these pumps come without the reservoir -- back to square one! Anyone?
- posted
18 years ago