I recently took my 1996 Plymouth Grand Voyager in to Canadian Tire (Had to use them as my mother was using her Canadian tire card to pay for the repairs) to have a new serpentine belt put on as the one on the van was coming apart in pieces. I also noticed that there was power steering fluid leaking from somewhere as well. I asked them to check it out for me. They said it needed an engine shampoo to see the leak as there was so much oil around.After shampooing they discovered that a piece of the belt has wrapped around the shaft of the power steering pump and took out the seal.I gave them the go ahead to fix the pump with a new pump. They said it would be 3.4 hours to replace the pump as per the book value.I waited from 10:30 a.m. until 8:45 p.m. to get my van back.The tech was working on it for the whole time and did not work on any other vehicles. As I was waiting for him to give me my keys back he had the van still on the hoist double checking his work he discovered a leak coming from the rack and pinion. This was not just a leak but was gushing out of the seal area on the rack.This was not leaking at all when it went into the shop and was not leaking when he checked out the power steering system after the shampoo.
My question is this what could have caused the seal to blow in the rack and pinion. The shop is not taking any responsibility for the leak and said that it was just something that went on it's own. Is it possible that the new pump was defective and caused a pressure build up high enough to blow out the seal? The next day the store service manager called and said that he investigated and stated that it was not the shops fault and it would cost me another $700.00 to replace the rack with a new one. I needed my van and said to go ahead under protest that they should be covering the cost as they caused the rack to fail. When I went in to the shop the next day the tech's where working on replacing the rack when they told me that they had to replace the new power steering pump they put in the day before with a new pump from the Chrysler Dealership as this pump was also leaking.
Are my suspicions right that the failure of the first pump caused the failure of the rack and pinion. Any insight would be very helpful and any ideas how to handle taking this further would be very much appreciated.
Thanks for your help..
Tom.
P.S. My van is broke down in my yard because the new serpentine belt has come off and the shop said that I would have to pay for the expense of the towing the van to the shop and let them check it out to see if it was anyway their fault that the belt came off. They said that snow build up was probably the cause of the belt coming off and that they would not cover putting the belt back on. The manager said I would have to pay for this as well. My van was not driven in the snow as it was sitting in my driveway for
2 days during the blizzard we had. It was only after finished shovelling that I started my van and tried to back out when I realised that I had no power steering at all. When I looked in the engine compartment the belt was laying there off the pulleys. There was no snow or ice build up inside the engine compartment at all. I have owned this van for 4 years now and the belt has never come off before at all. Kind of strange why it is now coming off...?