ZookDawg

I told him how to do the mod, and in 10 minutes he had me back on the
phone, happy an excited he could turn his tires with the palm of one
hand (37’s on chevy axles) so it should work even better with smaller tires.
–This can be done with the pump in the rig.
– If you do not see an improvement you have air in the lines, cooler or pump.

First remove this cap. It is the cap that has wire on it- on a stock Sidekick

Now remove the spring from the cap, and insert a washer that fits
inside the cap,
and lands on the lip that holds the spring. The purpose
is to make the spring
more compressed for more tension.

Once the washer is installed it should look like this:

Now you are ready to re-install the spring, and put it all back together.

This will provide more pressure to turn bigger tires.

Now for a further mod. If you look inside that area after you have remove the  spring there is a brass piece in there. Remove that brass piece and you
will see a tiny offset hole in the casting.

This hole restricts the flow of hydraulic fluid. Use a drill index (found at any ace hardware). index that offset hole, it’s actually a very thin orifice. Now find a drill bit that is 1/64th bigger than the offset hole. Drill that hole 1/64th larger. Make sure your lines are unhooked, and after you drill that orifice out flush it with some P/S fluid and you are good to go.

You now have added flow to go with your added pressure from the washer mod. Their is no reason this pump can’t be used for heavy demand applications once it’s modded and drilled. You might however want to add a small p/s or tranny cooler if you plan  on running the steering hard or for long durations in heavy demand applications. Otherwise the fluid will get hot, expand and foam on you (as with any pump)

If anyone doing this washer mod will take a picture of that hole with the brass piece removed I would be happy to mark it, host it, and post it here so we can all see how to enlarge the hole. I forgot to take a picture of that orifice.

I searched high and wide for this info, and it took me two weeks to find the information to properly mod the pump. So I thought I would document it
and make the info easily available for those who want to do the mod. Thanks to those who assisted me in my search for knowledge– Sky