My wife's old minivan is having troubles and I'm way too cheap to take it to a shop, if it's something I can possibly do myself.
The problem began a few days ago when it was having trouble starting. You'd turn the key and it would fire, but die immediately, no idle. After a few tries it would start and run perfectly fine. Then she called me at work to say that she'd had a terrible time starting it, but then after a few miles the power steering quit. She could man-handle the steering wheel and she made it home that way.
I have it jacked up in the garage. I got the power steering pump off and bought a new one. There is lots of metal in the old fluid. I took the old one apart and everything was intact except for some serious scoring and galling where the vane rotor was eating into the pump body.
I have the new pump installed and was getting ready to flush the system when it occurred to me that maybe the damage to the pump could be a result of damage elsewhere and not necessarily the cause of the problem. I didn't want get it flushed and start it up only to damage the new pump.
Any ideas? I couldn't see how the starting problem could be related to the power steering, but it sure was a coincident if it wasn't. I can do a lot of this kind of stuff for myself, but don't claim to be a mechanic. I probably know just enough to get myself into trouble.