Dodge Ram Power Steering Oil Cooler Dorman OE Solutions 918-308

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In this video, we're going to be working with our 2008 Dodge Ram 1500 Hemi. We're going to show you how to remove and replace the power steering cooler. If you like this information, please click "subscribe." We have a ton more videos on this truck as well as many other makes and models. If you want these parts for your vehicle, they're available from 1AAuto.com. You can follow the link in the description.

Here's the items you'll need for this repair: 10mm socket, ratchet, 10mm wrench, side cutters, drain pan, slide jaw pliers, rags or paper towels, gloves, safety glasses, transmission fluid, funnel, jack, and jack stands.

Your power steering cooler is located at the bottom front of the radiator on this 2008 Dodge Ram 1500. In order to give us a little more room to access the bolts, we'll remove this lower wind tray here. This wind tray is held in with these little plastic retainers. You can use a pair of side cutters to wedge in between. Make sure you get evenly on both sides, and pry down on those two in the front behind the bumper. There are also two clips that secure this to the bottom of the radiator fan trough. Ours are missing. Once you remove those, you can either remove it from the top or out of the bottom.

This job should be doable from the ground, especially where we have a little bit of a lift in our truck. We put it on a lift to make it easier to show you, or if you'd like a little more room to work, you can also raise and support your vehicle. We'll remove these two clamps. Be sure to make note of which hose goes to which line on the power steering cooler, as one is pressure and one is return. Be sure you have a drain bucket underneath your hoses before removing the clamps. This particular style, you simply squeeze together with a pair of slide jaw pliers, work them off of the fitting. Ours is going to contact the other so we'll move it up and onto the cooler. You can open up the jaws of the pliers a little more, carefully work the line back and forth to free it up, and remove it from the power steering cooler.

There are two brackets at the bottom of the power steering cooler that run across the bottom of the radiator to secure it. Each one is through bolted with a 10mm nut and bolt. We'll remove these with a 10mm socket ratchet and wrench. Once you've removed the last bolt, simply bring the power steering cooler down from the vehicle, place it in a drain bucket to keep it from spilling.

Here we have our old power steering cooler that we removed from our 2008 Dodge Ram 1500 and our new part from 1AAuto.com. As you can see, these parts are exactly alike, have the same brackets to bolt to the bottom of the radiator, same slotted hole to help with alignment, and the same power and return lines on them. Your power steering cooler is designed to keep the power steering fluid at the proper operating temperature. This fluid can be made hot by the fact that our truck has larger wheels and tires on it. If it's used for plowing or off road use, anything that's going to put a lot of extra strain and load on those suspension and steering components, it's going to make the power steering pump work harder.

As it works harder, it gets hotter. Hot fluid becomes thinner, so running it through a cooler to be cooled by the air going across the radiator from the cooling fan brings it down to the proper temperature, which gets it to the right viscosity to properly pressurize and lubricate the system. If these fins become damaged or the cooler becomes clogged, you'll notice a severe decrease in power steering performance, or it could catch a rock or become corroded from road debris, from sitting at the front of the vehicle, which can cause a leak in power steering fluid, which will create a visible leak as well as poor power steering performance. If your power steering cooler is damaged or clogged, this new part from 1A Auto is going to go in, direct fit, just like your original equipment, get your truck steering and feeling the way it should again, and fix you up right.

Reinstall the power steering cooler into the vehicle. Send your bolts through, both the power steering cooler and the radiator holes from the front with the nut on the back side by the trough, and tighten up the bolts with the 10mm socket ratchet and wrench. The old style hose clamps we had on our power steering lines were getting old and stretched out, and were starting to leak a little, so we're going to replace them with screw-style band clamps. If your old clamps are fine, you can reuse them.

Reinstall your power steering lines onto the cooler. If you're replacing yours like we have, you tighten the clamps down with a flat blade screwdriver. Otherwise, you'll reinstall the spring clips with slide jaw pliers the reverse way you removed them. Reinstall the plastic air dam. Just line it up, push the plastic retainer pins back into place, and, again, ours is missing the two under the radiator, and reinstall yours if you have them. Otherwise, there's two under the cross bar, and two at the front that connect to the back of the bumper. Remove the cap from the power steering reservoir, and insert a clean funnel. This particular vehicle uses ATF+4 transmission fluid as opposed to a traditional power steering fluid, so we'll fill the reservoir up with that.

To reduce some of the load on the power steering system and allow the fluid to flow more freely, we're going to partially raise and support our vehicle, just to take a little bit of weight off the front tires. You can do this with a jack and jack stand at home. We're using a lift. Leave the tires touching the ground partially, we're going to start it with the power steering cap off and run the wheels back and forth to the full lock position. Hold it there for several seconds, and rotate it the other way. You may splash some fluid here, so we put the funnel in to try and contain that, and, just to be safe, we put a drain bucket underneath our reservoir.

Start up the vehicle, work the wheel back and forth to the fully locked position, to the other side. We'll repeat this process a few times. Again, the power steering reservoir cap is off right now. This will allow air to bleed out of the system. We'll recheck our fluid level and repeat this step several times. Our fluid level is right where it should be, so we'll reinstall our cap, and test drive the vehicle to make sure that our power steering is assisting just the way it should.

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