So this weekend I was feeling manly and decided to work on the vehicles. My truck has had a power steering leak for about 3 years. All the money I paid for power steering fluid would have easily bought three power steering pumps.

I head out to Advanced Auto Parts and purchase a new power steering pump. I have never replaced one and luckily the gentleman helping me told me what I needed which was a pulley remover. I have never used one either. I also purchased spark plugs for my wife's truck and a repair manual for her vehicle. Needless to say I never got to replace her spark plugs.

In order to remove the power steering pump from a 1999 Ford Ranger you need to remove the pulley from the pump. The pulley covers up the three mounting screws. So I attempt to use the pulley remover. What do you know? There is no room, my radiator is in the way. So after a bit of screaming and cussing I decide to go back to Advanced Auto Parts and get a repair manual for my truck. Of course the manual says nothing about the radiator being in the way and says all you need is the removal tool.

Me being the smart guy I am, I decide to loosen up the bolts that hole the radiator in place and try to shift the radiator over. That doesn't work so I tell the wife to get me something big to put radiator fluid in. This was a bad idea. I remove the hose and a torrent of old used radiator fluid gushes out with no rhyme or reason. A third of it ended up on my driveway. Once drained the radiator came out no problem.

Once that was accomplished the pulley removal tool fit on pretty well once I figured out how the damn thing worked. The instructions weren't all that great. It took about a half hour to get that bastard off. From there getting the new one on was a cinch. But now I had to go back to the store and buy radiator fluid and more power steering fluid.

So far I haven't noticed any leaking but time will tell on that. But my hands don't look so good. I have about a million cuts and scrapes and my body just aches from bending over and trying to loosen bolts that haven't been loosened in almost 10 years. I have to give mechanics mad props. It is a horrible job. My hands still aren't 100% clean even though I scrubbed the hell out of them. I think I lost 15 pounds in sweat and I may have invented some new cuss words. But in the long run I feel good about myself. I did a job with little to no experience using my own tools and time. I probably saved myself a couple hundred bucks in labor costs. Next month I am going to do another big job on the truck. I'm sure I will post about it when it is complete.