Power steering problems with my '01 E53
 

All of a sudden the power steering died on my 2001 X5 E53 4.4i while my wife was driving it. She was smart enough to check the fluid level and there was none in it but when she filled it she put in actual power steering fluid and not ATF. When she got home and told me about it the resevoir was empty again so this time we put in ATF like you're supposed to. Obviously I must have a leak somewhere and the car is going into the dealer tomorrow to have the problem looked at; but I know the dealers have problems diagnosing these older model X5's and tend to lean toward very costly complete replacement of systems. I do most of my own maint. and have another E53 parts car so i'm looking for suggestions after the dealer tells me it will cost me thousands to repair.

Any help would be appreciated.

Higgins:dunno:

Check the hose on the reservoir, Should be easy to find once u put more fluid in it.

That's what I would have thought
 

That's what I thought too; but when I put the ATF in it after my wife filled it with power steering fluid it was empty again but after filling it and running the steering stop to stop with the engine on it sucked some fluid in and the level went down but there was no fluid on the ground! I'm waiting to hear back from the dealer (my wife dropped it off this morning with no problems in the steering) to see what they say but I'm thinking it was just low and putting the lower weight fluid in it caused a problem and I should just flush the power steering fluid myself with the turkey baster a day method. The car was due for it's checkup anyway so i'm not worried about the diagnostic fee; I need all the service interval stuff reset anyway. At least if it needs a pump or something I have the spare parts from my '00 but if it's a hose you are right you would expect to see fluid on the ground. The fluid had to go somewhere.

Maybe the spill gets trapped by the belly pan(not hitting the ground right away).

In any rate, your dealer should be able to tell you what's wrong. Good luck.

On my 2001 3.0 the hose from pump to the steeringsylinder (dont know name in English) started leaking, the one with coolingloop behind front bumper. This made a pond of oil on garagefloor. i changed it and added new atf oil.
I also had som drops of oil hanging on my left rubbercower where the sylinder for left front wheel comes out. This leak diesepeard after new oil was added, talkin to a mekanic i know he said that new oil contains cemicals that softens rubber and this may have coused my oring to seal again.
This made me happy because its no repair on the steearingrack, you must by new and its wery expensiv.

Makes sense
 

I understand and agree with your hypothesis in that the fluid was pooling in the lower engine cover and that's why I didn't see it leaking. But in typical BMW dealer fashion they want to replace everything. The 3 hoses, the pump and the rack and pinion unit for a total of like $5k. I ran into this before when I had problems with the stereo system and they told me to replace the whole system to the tune of $6K; but after further investigation by me I found the problem was actually just a bad nav drive. So a simple few hundred dollar part becomes a $6K fix when you take it to the dealer. My concern is that's what is going on here again. If the rack an pinion unit is "leaking fluid like crazy" then that tells me the pump is fine because it's obviously doing it's job and pumping fluid to the rack and pinion. If the hoses are actually bad then they would be leaking and you wouldn't even get fluid to the R&P unit; because the whole system would lose pressure. I just don't want to buy and install new parts for it if they aren't even bad in the first place and I don't need them. I think they are just in CYA mode so that they don't replace the R&P unit and then later find that the pump is bad.

I have a 2000 E53 parts car; so I have a lot of these parts and the dealer is willing to use them. I'm just trying to figure out at this point what really needs to be replaced and what doesn't.