Hi everyone,

Thankfully nothing to do with my own Freelander!

I work for a Ford dealership, and we have a 2007 Freelander 2 GS and the power steering is heavy. Also when turned on full right hand lock you can hear a hissing sound, rather like air leaking out.

Having read some of the forum topics on the issue, we have changed the pas oil and replaced the reservoir, but it hasn't made any difference.

Any ideas what it might be, before we end up changing the pump or rack at vast expense?

Yeah, the little filter inside the PAS fluid reservoir gets blocked over time. The filter isn't removable so it means a new reservoir as any attempts to clean it usually result in it disintegrating into a million small pieces.

Unfortunately it wasn't the reservoir..

We were told by a local LR dealer that it was either the steering pump or rack. The steering pump was the cheaper of the two, so my boss opted to change the pump.

Guess what??

Wasn't that either

Experience says if it's not the reservoir, its the rack

Yes, it was the rack

Oh well all 3 changed should be good for another 100000

It's made me quite paranoid though now, in case it happens to mine!

Out of curiosity, what was the cost of that little(??) job and was it a trade in? I have never really understood the car industry and trade ins'. The sales staff take a quick look around the cars, check the history and that's it! Seems crazy to me that they don't test drive it like the buyer of their car and maybe even got one of their mechanics to give it a once over.

Well some of us do check thoroughly! Not sure how much it cost yet, but the vehicle was purchased from auction. I tell you if I had driven this 74,000 mile GS manual before buying my HSE auto, I definitely wouldn't have bought one. The difference is like night and day!