On Friday nights here at Mission Raceway in Mission, BC, Canada, they have the street legal drag racing nights, where anyone with a drivable street legal car with mufflers can race anyone for bragging rights or even just to see how their car can do.
I usually go out with my friend who drives a 79 Mustang with a 460 big block swap. That car runs mid to high 11's. I've been going out there to watch and be the pit crew for a couple years now, so I decided to see how my daily driver, my 1995 Dodge Stratus with 212,000km, 2.0L engine 5 speed could do.
Low 18's, but If i try harder I might be able to make high 17's. That's besides the point.
After about 5 runs I noticed as I was coming back in the return lane that it was getting difficult to steer. I replaced the power steering pump with a reman one about 4 months ago shortly after I bought the car, because it lost all pressure and made noises while accelerating.
Everything was fine until the 6th run, when I had no power steering at all. I decided to call it quits there.
What I think happened is that from the idle to 6000 rpm runs and then slow driving after that gave it no time to cool down completely between runs, even though each run was 20-30 min in between.
When I did the power steering pump originally back in february, I decided to use AMSOIL PSF because it met the chrysler/mopar spec for my car, after seeing how long and difficult of a job it was to change, I didn't want to do it again anytime soon.
On the way home from the track (I live in Richmond, BC, about 1.5 hrs believe from the track) the power steering started to improve. By the next morning everything was normal again.
I'm wondering if I should flush out the old fluid and put new stuff in, because it might have overheated? Can that cause loss of pressure if the fluid gets too hot? The pump never made any weird noises that night, just a loss of pressurized steering.
I usually go out with my friend who drives a 79 Mustang with a 460 big block swap. That car runs mid to high 11's. I've been going out there to watch and be the pit crew for a couple years now, so I decided to see how my daily driver, my 1995 Dodge Stratus with 212,000km, 2.0L engine 5 speed could do.
Low 18's, but If i try harder I might be able to make high 17's. That's besides the point.
After about 5 runs I noticed as I was coming back in the return lane that it was getting difficult to steer. I replaced the power steering pump with a reman one about 4 months ago shortly after I bought the car, because it lost all pressure and made noises while accelerating.
Everything was fine until the 6th run, when I had no power steering at all. I decided to call it quits there.
What I think happened is that from the idle to 6000 rpm runs and then slow driving after that gave it no time to cool down completely between runs, even though each run was 20-30 min in between.
When I did the power steering pump originally back in february, I decided to use AMSOIL PSF because it met the chrysler/mopar spec for my car, after seeing how long and difficult of a job it was to change, I didn't want to do it again anytime soon.
On the way home from the track (I live in Richmond, BC, about 1.5 hrs believe from the track) the power steering started to improve. By the next morning everything was normal again.
I'm wondering if I should flush out the old fluid and put new stuff in, because it might have overheated? Can that cause loss of pressure if the fluid gets too hot? The pump never made any weird noises that night, just a loss of pressurized steering.