2002 Ram 1500 SLT/Sport, 4.7L V8, Auto.
It never ends does it?

First, some background on the problem.
Around 20-25000mi ago, the rack went out on my dad's Ram; we took it to the shop and they replace the rack and all was well...till a few weeks ago.
He started experiencing a sticking wheel and a slight bump in the steering. Took it to the shop, they said its the rack...ok, so it is with in warranty, so they were just gonna charge labor. 3 days later we get the truck back...turns out, they put a new rack in, still having problems, another rack in....still...then they find out that little u-joint on the steering shaft coming from the column is shot...ok...new part ordered from Dodge. All is well till they go to test drive it...then the seals and hoses for the rack explode (yes, explode). Truck gets limped back to the shop where they call Dodge asking what the hell is up.
Dodge laughs at them saying that the 3rd party rack they put in the truck 3 times already don't work well.

They order a MOPAR replacement, put a ton of ATF through the lines, and all is mostly well again...
At least since they had the truck for 3 days and saw how pissed my dad was, they dropped everything and ate the costs.

Now for the occuring problem.
Upon acceleration, there is some sort of hiss/whine coming from the engine bay...starts at about 2000RPM and gets higher and higher then seems to kind of taper off.
It only seems like it does it under load (driving).
I know a water pump can do this when its starting to go, but this has only started after the rack went out 3 times.
I'm wondering if its the pump...I think it got stressed when the seals blew up. It seems to be dragging on the engine, whatever it is...
BTW, the pump IS FULL.

Thanks for any imput!

 

Does he have a cold air intake? If so you may be getting a hissing from that..

As for ps related hissing.. if the ps rack blew apart and you lost all the fluid, your power steering pump may have been running dry when they limped it back.... Could have done some damage to the internals of the pump...

 

It doesn't have a CAI, I was thinking it probably ran dry.
About how long can we expect this pump to last at the moment? It IS 8 (soon to be 9) years old..

 

I'd be finding me a new shop to do rack installs in the future! They either are using CHEAP rebuilt racks OR the idiots didn't flush and purge the system after installing the rack. Enough air in the system will blow out the seals in any rack and YES can damage the pump...

 

Depends on how badly it is whining. Give this a try to bleed out the system (its what alldata recommended for my old truck dodge dakota)

Turn vehicle power to on without starting the vehicle (toprevent wheel from locking up)
Remove PS Pump Cap (resoivar).
Turn wheel all the way left and all the way right about 5-6 times.... Thats how your supposed to bleed the air out (from what i remember anyways)... MAybe that will help your problem? its worth a try.

 

Hammer, we've had a lot of work done at that shop before, and yes, they were using remans.
I think their remans are bad, my truck went through 2 reman master cylinders, then they put in a new one....charged me the reman price though.
They didn't even charge my dad for parts or labor or anything....just take the truck...lol

I must also say this now that you mention the bleed procedure, I DID have to keep putting more fluid in...and I wasn't overfilling.

Thanks guys!

 

That could be a big part of it... Did you try bleeding it? If so has the noise cut down some?

 

sorry you had so much trouble, hows it holding up now? where is a good place to get good reman ps racks from?