Plastic in power steering pump reservoir?

[Montana73]

I own a 2004 Reinell 18FNS w/ a 4.3 liter Volvo Penta. As I was using the boat to pull the kids on their tube I made a left turn and as I came out of the turn my steering assist quit working so boat was hard to steer. When I finally made it back to the boat dock initial finding was pump was VERY hot and the fluid looked burnt/milky. My bad, as I had not checked the fluid prior to this outing but had a couple times earlier in the year. The next day I drained the reservoir and removed the pump. After removing pump from reservoir I found what seemed to be a rather large "glob" of white plastic in the bottom of the reservoir as well as in the internals of the pump after further disassembly. I was wondering if anyone has had a pump like this apart and if they might know what it is. Also I was wondering if there is supposed to be some type of cooler on this system as I found a splice in one of the lines that goes from pump to steering actuator. I am fairly new to the I/O type of boats as my previous 2 boats were outboards. If anybody has any info or links for this problem I would appreciate any knowledge you could offer up. Thanks and look forward to hearing back from someone.

 

[dypcdiver]

Can't help with the blob of plastic, but the powersteering oil cooler is located in the raw water inlet hose at the transom (or should be).

 

[Montana73]

Yes it was dypcdiver, I just had to dig a little deeper and it was there. It looked in fine shape and held pressure on steering fluid side and didn't leak over to the water side so am still a little confused on why it was spliced together. I am assuming for winterization purposes but it was also glued with something? Oh well, it is hooked up correctly again, and my new power steering pump is on its way (ouch), a somewhat expensive mistake I made. As far as the plastic "blob" I found in the reservoir, I believe it was a filter and filter holder as I found a schematic of the internal parts of power steering pump and those were the only two items I did not see in my teardown of the pump. Thanks again for the helpful info dypcdiver!