RE: Hydraulic hose rebuild

["Gorman, Ken (PA62)" <Ken.Gorman@iac.honeywell.com>]

I had my hydraulic hose rebuilt on my 1990 Audi 200T about 18 months ago.
No problems!

Make sure you do the following:
call ahead to the shop and make sure they handle metric.  I went to 2 shops
who couldn't find the right fittings, etc.  I then started calling places to
see if they handled metric sizes.

Once I found a shop, the total time to build a new hose using the old
fittings was 15 minutes.  Total cost $24.00

After installing the newly built high pressure hose, the power steering pump
was making a groaning noise.  The original hose had a "restrictor" in the
middle which restricted the flow.  The new hose didn't.  Too much flow
caused a groan.  Back to the shop.  They had already discarded the old hose
with the restrictor in place.  They cut my newly built hose in half, placed
a valve in the middle and gave it back to me.  I installed the new hose
again, started the car and turned the wheels side to side and heard the
groan.  I turned the valve shut a little and repeated until the valve was
closed enough that no groaning noise was heard.  It hasn't had a problem
since.  

The new valve cost $34.00 and the guy charged me an extra $6.00 to install
it.  My total cost was $64.00.  At the time, I didn't know about the $80
hoses available or I surely would have gotten one of those.  Had I been able
to recycle the "restrictor" initially, the cost would have been much
cheaper.

Good luck.

Regards
Ken

Ken Gorman