Yeah, don’t ask how. I went to replace my seeping power steering cooler in my ‘05 1500 4x4 this morning. Simple job, right? The mounting nuts and bolts were rusted, as well as the ears on the cooler that attaches to the radiator. The “easy” one wasn’t too bad; the other was tough. Had to wire brush the rust off and they were a bear to get off. As I removed the old cooler, one lip on the radiator (where the bolt holes are) snapped off due to corrosion. But I got it all back together tight and it only took a few minutes to purge the air out of the system.

A quart of ATF+4 was not enough to completely fill the reservoir so I drove 2 miles to the auto parts store and picked up another quart. Came home and topped it off and went to park the truck back on the street. Went to lower the steering wheel and that’s when the tilt lock took a dump. If it would have been in my normal driving position I’d have called it a day, but it was all the way, and I do not like driving in that position. Getting the steering column covers off was a treat. I’ve never removed them but the two bottom Torx screw heads were stripped. I had to basically “break” the plastic to get it off. Not sure of the nomenclature, but the white ear? that holds the black plastic part the cable pulls on was broken. I held the black part against the collar so the teeth meshed and unlocked it so I could lower it where I wanted. The covers snapped together reasonably tight and the one side screw installed fine.

I may get new covers, but for now, it’s no longer going to have tilt steering. I’ve put a ton of $$$ into this truck this year. It’s getting tiresome!