ck9887

Does anyone know at what mileage it is recommended to change PS fluid? While getting my oil changed last week, the tech told me he would recommend doing a PS flush and showed me the fluid, it looked just a tad darker than fresh fluid. Car is an 08 Z51 with 40K miles.

Thanks

LMB-Z

I have never changed PS fluid in my life. Not saying you shouldn't, I just never have.

Rocketmanwpb

Like all the fluids in the car there is nothing wrong with changing the power steering fluid. You could do it yourself and use the Ranger method of just extracting the fluid from the reservoir a couple of times and replacing what you take out with fresh fluid.

AORoads

I'm sure some enterprising company has devised an electronic "flush" method, but sometimes flushing is not the best way to go. For that reason, I'd agree w. rocket above.

Matter of fact, that's what I did w. my '08 when it had about 4 yrs on the fluid---I did it by time in use vs. miles since I'm now at about 44K miles and 5.5 yrs.

As to why to do it at all, steering racks do go out (at least on C6s they seem to) and I do think it may be fluid-related. Some don't do fluid change, and that's fine because their car is not my car, or my money if it needs repair. Fluid change is always less expensive imo, and in my car's case, it is my money.

Gearhead Jim

I changed the A6 trans fluid, diff fluid, and PS fluid; on our 2009 at about 50k miles. Sent samples to blackstone labs for analysis.

The trans and dif came back great, the PS fluid was rated as being in pretty poor condition but they don't have a big number of PS fluid samples to use as a baseline.

There is a flush procedure in the Service Manual, it takes at least two people but does not need the engine running or any special tools for the flush. That's what I used to replace mine.