Power Steering Repair & Service

Power steering used to be straightforward. From the 1970s through the early 2010s, vehicles ran hydraulic power steering — a belt-driven pump pushing fluid through a steering rack — and the failure modes were predictable: fluid leaks, pump bearings, rack seals. Diagnosis was straightforward and repair was bounded. Then the industry shifted, fast. Today there are three different power steering architectures in active production (hydraulic, electro-hydraulic, and pure electric — EPS), each with its own failure modes, diagnostic process, and repair options. A shop that approaches all three the same way will be wrong on at least two of them.

The most common mistake we see is shops treating an EPS failure as a hydraulic-system problem. Pure electric power steering has no fluid, no belt-driven pump, no hydraulic rack — so checking fluid level or recommending a "power steering flush" on an EPS vehicle isn’t just useless, it suggests the shop doesn’t know what system the vehicle has. The opposite mistake is also common: treating a hydraulic system as if it’s electronic, missing a simple leak that a 15-minute pressure test would have caught. Asking "what kind of power steering does my vehicle have?" before authorizing any work is a fair test of whether the shop is equipped to do the job.

At Advantage Auto Service in Marietta, power steering diagnosis starts with identifying the system. We scan for stored codes, test fluid level and condition on hydraulic and electro-hydraulic systems, verify electrical output and steering torque sensor readings on EPS systems, and confirm the actual failure mode before quoting. Different systems get different processes — and we won’t pretend they’re interchangeable. We’ll also tell you honestly when a "power steering problem" is actually something else entirely (loose tie rods can mimic steering issues; a worn engine mount can change how steering feels under load).