Thought someone might be interested in the easy way to change your power steering. I believe mine came with ATF (it was red)...owners manual said power steering fluid. Ended up using Valvoline PSF. I think it uses just a little bit over a bottle...buy two.

• Jack the front end of your vehicle up by the jack point front and center. No weight can be on the wheels.
• Use a turkey bastor or something similar with a long thin neck, remove as much as you can out of the resivoir.
• Remove the upper hose from the power steering fluid resivoir...that is the return line
• I've done this twice...once with a wine bottle and once with a large pickle jar. The pickle jar rested nicely on the engine mount. The wine bottle needed a support, but did work better.
  https://goo.gl/photos/onYn9BSzcJKi36KK7
• If using the pickle jar, turn the engine on for about a second or two. Repeat until you get little to no fluid out. If using the wine bottle, just let it go..pump it all out.
• Turn the wheel side to side...check your pickle jar every so often. You are pumping the fluid out of the power steering pump. With your wheels up in the air, little to no effort is needed to do this.
• Reconnect your return line to the resivoir. Fill the resivoir as much as you can.
• With the engine running, keep adding fluid until fluid reaches max line. Make sure to turn your wheels side to side 5-10 times.
• Let it sit for a few minutes to allow bubbles to consolidate/dissipate. Run the engine again and turn the wheel to get all bubbles out.
• Cap the resivor and let the car down....done.

 

Hi! Thanks for your advice. I had my son help me this past weekend and got the fluid changed out. I used the Valvoline PSF, so we'll see if that is OK since many are of the opinion that it should work.

A couple things to note in addition to your excellent instructions:
1) To suck out the old PSF in case the top is a bit narrow for the turkey baster, use a spray bottle. You can buy them from WalMart, a hardware store, etc. I stuck the straw end into the PSF reservoir and sprayed out the remaining fluid into the bottle. Worked pretty well.

2) The clamps are awkward to remove and put back. My neighbor had a hose clamp tool and helped me out. Maybe it is my poor manual dexterity. If I do this again I might get a different kind of hose clamp before re-attaching the hose.

 

Thanks! A couple things I did different that worked out well:
I used a spare piece of hose with a plug (bolt) in it to close off the top of the reservoir where I had removed the return line so I could fill the reservoir.
I started with pumping (with the ps pump) what I couldn't get out with the syringe, then I filled and pumped 3 times to get all the dirty fluid out. (I did one car twice and it wasn't enough) Used a bit more than 2 bottles (half qts) of AMSOIL psf.
I pulled the connectors off the spark plugs in my lancer and used the starter to turn the pump; for my outlander I pulled breakers in the engine panel, 21 and 23, labeled fuel pump and coil pack or something to that effect.