Another day, another dumb mistake.

I was cleaning around the serious gunk on the power steering fluid reservoir cap with brake cleaner spray because I didn't want to drop any gunk inside or have the wind blow the gunk on the gray part of the reservoir inside the reservoir when I removed the cap.

I think some accidentally got inside. I operated under the foolish assumption that the red cap would protect the reservoir but when I removed the cap there was some liquid that popped out with it.

The inside smelled like brake cleaner but I can't tell if that's the smell of PS fluid since it does smell somewhat like brake cleaner or if it's the fumes in the air.

I took a flashlight, looked inside and saw one or two small bubbles floating on the surface along with a demarcation on the edge where fluid meets reservoir wall which seemed to hint at two fluids. Not sure if those were there before. I used a turkey baster to suck out a good portion of the fluid but the bubble was still in there. I then replaced the taken with clean power steering fluid.

It seems to steer fine and I looked inside the well and saw no bubbles.

Did I **** myself or the PS system? Am I looking at PS system failure down the line? Maybe I should bleed the entire system and do a PS fluid change? Would that work? Is there any way I can get out of this without permanent damage?

 

I think that you are ok. Brake cleaner is very volatile, so it should evaporate very quickly

 

So I did some testing by putting brake cleaner into power steering fluid I placed in a cup and overnight the brake cleaner seems to have evaporated and there is no smell or change in consistency compared to the control group which consists of the same amount of power steering fluid in a separate cup. Although I can't tell if there are any molecular changes or some other nonvisible change.

To be safe I'm going to get rid of all of the power steering fluid and re-do. I've been meaning to do it anyway since it's all black and I have no idea what fluid the previous owner put in here to begin with. It also has a strong odor to it compared to the Honda PS fluid straight from the bottle.

But now I have another problem. I started up the car today, drove it about thirty feet and parked it. Opened up the hood and what do I see? PS fluid all over the top of the reservoir.

I have no idea how it got there. I'm assuming it came out of the red cap. Maybe air bubbles pushed it out of the reservoir? Is this a bad sign? Maybe it was because I had just put new power steering fluid in?

Worst case scenario is I think it's foaming because there's some sort of leak. Perhaps this would explain why the fluid was low to begin with. Or maybe it foamed out of the top a long time ago like it just did now until it gets to a level where foaming isn't enough to cause it to come out of the top.

I tried looking around the area but could not see any leak.