The Mighty Merc – Power Steering Fun!

This was one of the bigger pain in the butt parts of this project for no good reason, but we’ll get to that frustration later. I am planning on using the stock Ford pump that came with the 5.0 to power things. From what I have been able to find, this pump should flow enough and put out enough pressure to get the job done. If it doesn’t, we’ll figure out another plan.

I started out doing the easy thing first, running the low pressure side and cooler lines. The Merc came with a nice large transmission cooler that I am no longer using since I’ve gone to a row your own. However, it was living in the wrong place since the winch control box wanted to live there. So I modified a bracket or two and moved it over to the drivers side, and rotating it 90° while I was at it. You can see how the winch control box now resides where the cooler used to live in the photo below:

With the easy stuff done, now it was time to knock out the high pressure side. Getting this hose made up turned out to be a giant pain due to the odd fitting that Ford used on the Pump side. Every hydraulic shop or automotive shop I went to either couldn’t find me that fitting, or flat out refused to touch a custom PS line. In the end I wound up buying a new hose for the Merc side, and a new hose for the Box side, and had my local Pirtek stick them together netting me this:

Whattapain

But now at least the steering portion of things is done. I still need to whip up a track bar since I’m running long shackles in the front, but that shouldn’t take much effort on my part. Finished photo of the box area just because: