Does anyone run a power steering cooler?

[RCWD21]

I found a small cooler from a mid 90's ford explorer and was planning on running it on my 87 pathfinder. I know the fluid gets pretty hot and well obviously there's no cooler from the factory.

 

Does anyone else run a power steering cooler? I haven't come across anyone on here that does and was just curious about it, if you do have you noticed any difference? Where'd you mount it? Any idea how much cooler the fluid is?

 

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[Backpacker]

I read a guy was going to do it with a 5 speed swapped d21 through the no longer used trans cooler in the radiator. Wonder if he ever did.

 

 

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[Slartibartfast]

I don't think I've read about anyone overheating a steering system on one of these, but I don't imagine a cooler would hurt anything if you wanted to add one. Plumbing it might be interesting. I remember having some trouble getting the return hose away from the exhaust when I had to replace my factory molded return hose with the straight hose I could get locally.

A friend of mine put a steering cooler on his van a few summers ago after boiling over his power steering res. The only time he got it that hot he was delivering mail (lots of stop and go, lots of turning, low air speed) on a 100°+ day. The hydroboost brakes were probably not helping matters either. IIRC the cooler he used was a stock Chevy piece that was basically just a zig-zag of hard line, no fins or anything, but it seemed to do the job. I'll bet the power steering hard lines running along the crossmember below the motor on LHD Pathfinders shed heat similarly.

 

 

[RCWD21]

The cooler I found is a single U tube with a ton of fins that make up the majority of this little things size. It has a bracket welded to it so mounting would be easy. Finding room is another story as obviously things are pretty tight. It's angled so I was hoping I could pop it up under the cross section beside the hood latch or somewhere similar but that's proving to be easier said than done.

 

As for plumbing I was going to run a hose from the hard line on the passenger side where it leads back to the resovoir and then from the cooler back to the resovoir. If the cooler doesn't really help at least I'll gain a little extra fluid capacity.

 

I'll attach a picture of it here in a little bit before I head to work. I paid like $5 for it at the junkyard a while back and it's just been sitting in my seat waiting.

 

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[RCWD21]

Here's the power steering cooler. It's a little bigger than my eyeball measurements.

 

 

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[Slartibartfast]

Not a bad looking cooler. The angle on those tube ends might make things interesting, though.

[RCWD21]

There is literally just enough room above the condenser after removing the passenger side upper screw so I can lean forward some to mount it once I make that 90° more of a twisted squiggly so it can give enough room for a hose to be attached and not rub through. Should only take about 5 feet of hose total to plumb in by the looks of it.

 

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