How To Replace Power Steering Pump 2004-08 Nissan Maxima

Disconnect the battery, use a 10mm wrench, loosen up the nut, take the terminal off, and set that aside.

Pull the wheel off. Use a 21mm socket, take the lug nuts off, remove the wheel.

Take a trim tool, take these trim clips out, take this shield off. There's two up here and there's a couple over here.

We need to release the tension on the belt because we need to take it off. Now if you're replacing the belt, you're going to need to take off the main belt, but we're not doing that, we're just replacing the pump. You need to loosen up the bolt, there's a bolt on the back of the pump, it's a 14mm wrench, and just you kind of have to feel for it, it's basically where the swivel of the pump is. So find that bolt and loosen it up, you don't have to take it off completely yet, but just loosen it.

Now on the tensioner, use a 12mm wrench and loosen this bolt up just a couple turns, you don't have to take it off. Now take a 12mm socket, and to loosen the belt you actually want to tighten the bolt, and slide the belt off and just out of the way.

Now I'm going to take this hose off. You can try to move this clamp over, use some needle nose pliers, make sure you have a drain bucket underneath because you're going to lose some fluid, and take this clamp and remove it and slide the hose off.

Now we need to loosen up the bolts for the pressure hose. Use a 24mm socket, loosen this up, there you go, and there'll be some seals here. It's a good idea to replace these seals. There's a wire retainer clamp right here, just slide that off and out of the way.

Now take this bolt out where the adjuster is, use that 12mm ratchet wrench, and slide that up.

Now on the back side of the pump, use a 14mm gear wrench, or just loosen up that bolt, the same one that you loosened earlier, and take that out, and it's a long bolt, one right there. Grab the pump and just slide it down and it slides right out.

Now we're going to have to transfer over the parts to the new pump. There's a hose, this has to be transferred over, this bracket, and the pulley.

So start by taking the pulley off, use a 19-millimeter socket, take the nut off, and just slide the pulley off. Now while the pulley's off, it's easier to get the bracket off, so we'll take that off, take these two bolts out, use a 12-millimeter socket.

Now line that up on the new pump, same way it came off, put the bolts in and snug those down. Put the pulley on, put the lock washer on and the nut, and tighten down the nut.

Now transfer over this hose. Use a 12mm socket, take these bolts out, and there's an o-ring right there. It's a good idea to replace that o-ring. Take off the cover. The new o-ring on this only goes one way, if you flip it around you're gonna see the o-ring, so make sure you have it going the correct way. Get the bolts started and tighten down the bolts, just snug, not too tight.

Take this cap off, just use some pliers and loosen it up. Now slide the pump in the same way it came out. Take the long bolt and get that started in the back and get that bolt started. It's really not easy to get that bolt even inserted in there, you're going to have to rock this back and forth a little bit just to get the hole to line up, and you can tighten that bolt up, but don't tighten it too tight, just get it snug because we have to adjust the belt after.

Now take the bolt that goes in the adjuster, you can actually slide this piece right off, this is going to go through here, then you have to line up, line it up and adjust the pump accordingly, so you might have to move the pump up or down. Try to get that started. Now take the this bolt and just line it up through the adjuster, you can move the pump up and down to try to get that to line up. If that pops out just pop it back in, and I'll just leave that loose as well.

Now we're going to put the hoses on. You can start with this pressure hose on the back side. Take the banjo bolt and the two seals, one seal's on the back side, one seals on the front side. Get this lined up and do the best you can to fit a torque wrench in here. I'm going to torque this to 40 foot-pounds.

Now install this hose line, that up and slide the clamp back in position. Now take the belt and go over the pulley. Why isn't this coming around? This shouldn't be any different. There we go, all right, that looks good.

And take the socket, 12mm, and we're gonna tension up the belt, and you do this by loosening the bolt on the tensioner. You just keep checking the belt, what you can do is kind of twist the belt, and you want to get it so it's almost 90 degrees, maybe a little bit tighter than this, that's good. You could pluck the belt too and make sure it sounds similar to that.

And tighten up the tensioner, just snug up this bolt, and if the belt seems to be squealing then you might want to tighten it up a little bit more as you run it. And tighten up the bolt on the back of the power steering pump, use a 14mm wrench.

Put the cover back on and push the push pins back in place. Oh, that one goes, this one goes here.

Put the tire on, line it up, put the lug nuts on, and torque the lug nuts to 80 foot-pounds in a cross pattern to tighten the wheel down evenly. Go around again, double check.

Now I'll connect the negative terminal and snug up the bolt, the nut, and just make sure it's snug.

Power steering reservoir is located right here, and you want to check your owner's manual, get the appropriate fluid for that, and there is a max line, so fill it up to about that max line. Try not to spill it, you want to just go.

Now I'm going to put the cap back on, and before I start the vehicle with the front wheels off the ground, I'm just going to turn the wheel, steering wheel, back and forth from stop to stop about 10 times.

Then come back out, double check the fluid level, adjust accordingly. Then you should be able to start the vehicle, turn the wheel back and forth, and again turn it off, adjust accordingly. You