Back when I used to post/visit regularly, quite a few people had removed their PS. My PS is on the fritz and this morning a god awful noise came from the PS area and began smoking like a madman. Now the PS doesn't work. For anyone who isn't running PS.. how the hell do you steer??? I struggled to drive to work today. Maybe I need to fully disable it? I don't know. My Maxima or more or less a beater at this point so I don't really want to spend any money to fix it if I don't have to.

 

More than likely you were low on PS fluid, hence the noise, then the pump locked up which started cooking the belt (and caused the smoke). When you hear a noise while you're steering, the first thing you do is check the fluid...

You'll never really get a power steering rack to feel as nice as a full manual rack, but if you at least loop the lines on the rack, that'll help.

 

I had actually started my car and it started making a crazy noise, so I shut it off. I popped the hood and was engulfed in smoke.. and then I went back inside to get my lunch.. came back out to leave for work, and started it back up. It was fine, then I tried to take a left out of the complex I live and and couldn't turn lol. I pulled over and there was tons of smoke. I was already late for work, so I couldn't do anything and it was dark when I got off.

What do you mean by loop the lines?

Thanks for the quick reply, BTW.

 

Connecting both lines to eachother on the rack itself.

 

And on the way to work today the brake light and the battery light both came on at the same time. Looks like everything is going to hell. Maybe time to retire the Maxima =/

 

I would check the belts. Brake/battery light are alternator going bad. Once I had that light on and my belt was missing!