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Dave, Jeff (all the others following along too) I have installed two pumps over the course of a few years. The last one was at Silver Lake Michigan during last years JKX in the parking lot of the hotel. I am guessing you guys are not running steering coolers? Honestly, I don't know of anyone who has not burned up at least one pump during ownership of a rig with ram assist. Even on my old tube buggie with full hydraulic ram set-up and pretty massive coolers, steering pumps being burned up were fairly common. At King of the Hammers, steering set-ups getting cooked are a big reason for race cars having a DNF. Enough of the history lesson, if you haven't installed an external cooler, do it. Put the thing in a place that can get great air flow no matter what type of cooler you run; Heat sink style, Plate and Fin style or the traditional Tube and Fin style. In fact a cooler with its own fan is the optimum route to go, these can be mounted anyplace too, since they don't need vehicle movement to provide air flow. I run an 12" Derale Heat Sink Cooler, it's good, but not great, I am going to do a better one with a fan. Here in the pictures, the first set up with my steering cooler on top of the crossmember, this got good air flow due to it being in the path of the factory radiators airflow being sucked over it. Then in the next picture, because I got a new larger trans cooler, I had to relocate the steering cooler below the crossmember and I definitely noticed an immediate lack of cooling on hot days on really slow trails and crawling scenarios (It only gets airflow when moving forward at a good pace) I now have to start adding more throttle to get the steering to turn when at a stop, where as before when the fluid was colder, I could use one finger to turn the wheel with no throttle input. The latest PSC pump seems to be doing pretty good for me, sorry to hear about yours Dave that sounds like a defect, but I will know more about my newest one in a few more weeks (or a month) when the southwest heats up. I was on the trail yesterday and it's really the hottest conditions (85-90 degrees) I have run since the install of the newest pump last september. It seemed to not fade like the old one did in the heat. Not sure if any of this helped you guys, but it's simple physics- a pump that gets hot from running in an engine bay, the job it does making pressurized fluid to push the ram assist rod means its going to make heat, no airflow over the parts because of what we do on the trail means heat staying in the engine......parts are going to fail.
Mel Wade and I have been discussing ways to defeat this every time we wheel. Here is my ultimate solution= much, much larger fluid reservoir maybe double the capacity we are currently running and a larger plate and fin style cooler with electric fans.