About a month ago, I changed my power steering pump belt on my 2001 SH. Once I installed my new belt, a bad grinding/whining noise developed from the power steering pump. I immediately thought it was the power steering pump that went bad.

So I went out to a junkyard and salvaged another pump from a 2001 Prelude. I got home and put it on the car with the new belt, same noise. I just thought by bad luck I had bought a bad pump from the junkyard. No big deal, it was only $50.

So then, I order anew factory remanufactured pump. Got it in the mail, and installed it. SAME NOISE WTF?

I have gone through three pumps and tried different tension settings but the noise is still there. It is loudest when the car is warming up and it is loud as hell. If I drive for about 50 miles, the noise goes away somewhat. Anyone ever deal with a situation like this before? Any ideas of what could be causing this?

When I was replacing the belts, I had both the alternator/AC belt and the PS belt off at the same time. Could that have thrown something off in the engine?

 

Since the chances of three pumps going bad on the same car are pretty slim. I would say that you have damaged the bearing in either your alternator or a/c compressor. An overtightened belt can really do some damage to those bearings.

 

i hope you completely replace your PS fluid properly. My Ps pump used to whine,expecially during warmup. So i replaced the fluid and all is well now.

or you mis-diagnosed your car.

 

When I take the belt off the noise doesn't happen, so it has to do with the steering system somehow...

When I originally changed the pump, I changed the fluid and put in pepboys generic "Honda power steering fluid". So I think the mixing of the OEM and generic fluids might be causing a problem. Tonight I am flushing that crap out and filling it up with OEM fluid. I hope it helps the situation.

 

Well I solved the problem. Completely drained and flushed the nasty old fluid out. It looked like rusty colored motor oil. And put in fresh clean OEM Honda fluid. No noise.

 

My bro have this same problem on his vehicle. Steering make noise when you turn right. Had the belt replace and same old problem. Pump might be going out since it 8 year old. Might change the fluid too..

 

i have had about 5 different types of fluids in my system in the past 3 weeks (bad leak that i was waiting on parts for) no noises at all

 

Big bump.

Changing the fluid doesn't do anything, trust me, even if some place tells you to its just a gimmick. Check for rack leaks, if no leaks are found then try replacing both o-rings on the pump for the hoses, they can cause a whine even if they don't look to be leaking.

To P.Hunter, you wasted your money, additives and stop leaks will seem to work at first but you could end up going to start the car and a rack end seal will blow and instantly dump all your fluid out, there's a reason why they say to only use Honda fluid in the manual. From my own experience with killing a rack with aftermarket fluids it's best to pull the belt and drive with no P/S until you can fix whatever problem it has.