Car restoration Part 4 (Power steering gearbox and pump) in April 2012

I noticed during the first investigation of car condition in 2010 that the steering gearbox had a minor leak.
It was pretty wet but nothing major to worry about at that time because it was not dripping on the floor. The 2012 was the right time to take care of this issue during the restoration project.
First thing to do was the removal of steering gearbox. Well it was not easy even looking at the manual as a reference this procedure was hard as hell and impossible to do by one person, because there wasn't much space to maneuver.

ITR during steering gearbox removal.

The main crossmember without
steering gearbox.

Steering gearbox removed.

I had purchased the steering gearbox and pump seal kit from Kotek with many seals but I have actually used only 3 of them, mainly because the leak was caused only by one oil seal and I did not have the appropriate tool for replacing the sleeve seals, so I rather did not take an unnecessary risk of damaging them.

Red marked seals have been replaced.

On this occasion I also disassembled the steering gearbox pump and replaced all o-rings and the main bearing as a precautionary measure.

Disassembled PS pump.

PS pump after overhaul.

After putting everything back to working order I had to bleed the air from the system. This caused me headaches for a whole day because the pump was very noisy and I did notice bubbles in the reservoir (cavitational noise). The PS fluid I have used was the Honda genuine power steering fluid. I spent significant time running the engine and trying to get the air out of the system, but nothing worked. After many trials and errors I noticed that the system was sucking the air through the upper rubber hose attached to the pump. The hose did not have any clamp from factory. After the years it probably got hard and after putting everything back together it did not provide the necessary sealing. One simple metal clamp healed this issue, the air got out and the noise vanished immediately. I was relieved.