steering moan at low speed turns

[gavinl]

My 97 Taurus has intermittent loud steering moans during low speed turns (e.g. parking lot manuevers).

P/S has been AutoRx-ed and replaced with Valvoline Mercon III fluid. During the moan I can feel some resonance through the steering wheel, anyone can clue in if I have a serious mechnical problem I might be dealing with?

 

[drive it forever]

If you are luckey, it could be aerated p.s. fluid causing the culprit. To purge the air out of the system, jack the car up, turn the wheel lock to lock 3 times with the car off, check fluid leval add if needed, start car, keeping at 2k rpm's, turn the wheel slowly lock to lock 10 times, let the car idle 3 minutes and shut off, lower the car and check the fluid leval again. Hopefully this is your problem and you got air into the system by changing/flushing the system out. If this dont work, I would have a good mechanic check the pump pressure next.

 

[BigDenCCMD]

gavinl

I had the same problem with my 98 Taurus. It was the tie rod ends or at least one of them. I had them both replaced and it went away. If you go that route, get new ones with grease fittings. The ones on mine did not and I'm sure that was the cause of failure. The car had about 68,000 miles on it.

 

[gavinl]

were the culprits the outer tie rods? I'll take a closer look at them. Thanks!

 

[K-Man]

Check your ball joints. Apparently this is a common Ford problem. My Escort did the same thing, moaned with feedback through the steering, and the first question the experienced mechanic asked was, "Is this a Ford?" As a temporary measure he carefully pierced the ball joint outer rubber with an awl and sprayed WD-40 or some such in the resulting hole. That quieted things. He said that the grease dries out over time, eventually causing the moan. Later as a precaution I had him replace the ball joints.