Can you drive with a power steering leak?

How long can you drive with power steering leak?

How long you can drive with a power steering leak depends on how big the leak is and how often you check and refill the system.

Some large leaks will deplete the power steering fluid reservoir in as little as a few hours, while small leaks may take a week before the reservoir gets low.

If you have a leaking power steering hose, those are usually pretty slow leaks. But don’t kid yourself, it’s not going to fix itself; you’ll have to replace the hose eventually. Just make sure you keep the reservoir topped off.

If you don’t keep the reservoir topped off and it runs out of fluid, you’ll destroy the pump in pretty quick order. But the damage doesn’t stop there because the pump can spread debris into the rack, causing much bigger and more expensive problems.

What are the risks of driving with a power steering leak?

Loss of power steering assist

If you’re driving and the system runs out of power steering fluid, you’ll lose all power steering assist, making it much harder to steer. This can happen unexpectedly, so there’s a real risk of causing an accident and even bodily injury.

Expensive power steering system damage

The biggest risk is that the system will run dry, which will destroy the power steering pump and spread metallic debris throughout the system. So you may be faced with a situation where the leak is caused by an old hose that you nursed along and now, because it ran out of power steering fluid, you have to replace the pump, hoses and the steering rack, costing thousands of dollars.

Do power steering stop leak products work?

Rarely. Stop leak products work by softening and swelling the rubber seals in the system. That may help stop steering system leaks temporarily, but over the long term, the softened seals are more likely to fail.

Also, stop leak products won’t do anything for leaking power steering hoses, which is one of the most common causes of steering system leaks.

What are the risks of using a power steering stop leak product?

As mentioned above, these products work by softening and swelling rubber components. The products aren’t selective. They soften all rubber components in the system, so they can cause quite a bit of damage to other perfectly good components.

I don’t recommend the use of any power steering stop leak product. Instead, fix the component that’s leaking.

©, 2023 Rick Muscoplat