Power steering pump replacement on my ‘95 325i turned into a perfect storm nightmarish project for me where everything that could go wrong, went wrong! Rebuilding the original pump was a total fail! Two remanufactured pumps were bad out of the box! Finally bought a new Chinesium pump and had to slightly modify the original pump bracket (same bolts that hold the bracket to the pump also partially hold the pump together) so that was a “hold your breath” experience but did end well! You can hate on the Chinese pumps all you want but this one saved my bacon! Three years on and it’s doing great! BMW made slight changes year to year and model to model on PS pumps, so you have to inspect them closely. If something like the pitch of the belt pulley is slightly off from the one on your old pulley, it won’t work. They used several different bracket designs also and the bracket, although technically removable, is considered part of the pump and share bolts so be prepared to hold your pump together if you need to swap brackets or “piecesparts” can go flying! I’ve changed a handful of PS pumps on various cars over the years and this was the most challenging (frustrating) one yet so far.
Sorry to hear how this issue panned out for you. We had some trouble sourcing our part and are shocked at the discrepancy around these pumps and lack of parts to replace them on such a popular platform. Happy that it sounds like you’re good to go now at least, our pump has worked flawlessly so far!
Nice video great angles. I've heard that any time you are replacing the pump you should also replace the reservoir since there is a filter in the reservoir that is fixed. So the only way to replace the filter is to replace the entire reservoir. Just to add to the video
Would you mind sharing your part number if you still have a picture or access to it otherwise? I just pulled a failed remanufactured cardone pump off my 93’ M50 and and looking for a replacement pump but do not have a BMW part number to go off of for the pump.
