Fail #2

Learn from my fail #2.  The last "replace it because it's going to fail eventually" on the Viper is in the power steering system.  The stock plastic pulley has a tendency to disintegrate, and the pump bracket is known to crack.  Either will ruin your day pretty quick.  When I bought my shifter from Ipsco, I also bought some upgraded billet aluminum parts to prevent both of these problems.  I painted the pulley a few posts back, and the bracket has been resting happily in the box until now.

First things first, I had to get the stock pulley off the pump.  I didn't want to mess with power steering fluid all over the place, so I decided to leave the pump in the car.  Like most modern cars, the pulley is just pressed onto the shaft of the pump.  With the pump unbolted and the airbox off, you can get a puller on the pulley.  The first one I used is one that I had already.  It hooks into the groove on the pulley, and grabs around 60% of the way around the groove.  I clamped a vice grips over it to keep the jaws tight in the groove.

No dice with that one.  The pulley didn't budge.  Rather than continuing with the exercise in futility, I went to the local Advance Auto Parts and borrowed one of their loaner tools.  This one was the full circle style puller that grabs the pulley groove all the way around to spread the load over the whole surface.

I started tightening the puller, and heard a "Pop" which usually means that the pulley came loose and started pulling off.  Nope.

Yeah, the puller actually broke the groove on the pulley.  The Pop wasn't the pulley sliding, it was the groove breaking.  Sigh...  With the groove broken, there was nothing for the puller to grab onto anymore.  So I had to take the pump off the car for a "last resort" pulley removal.  It starts by removing the plastic portion of the pulley from the steel hub.  A hammer and chisel are the tools of choice here.

With the hub bare, there are once again grooves you can hook a puller into.  This time I used the vice to keep the jaws clamped together and prevent slipping.

That didn't work either.  This thing was seriously stuck.  I had one more trick up my sleeve, and that was to cut the hub off.  This was an absolute last resort because you risk damaging the pump shaft.  Using a Dremel  with a cut off wheel, what you have to do is start grinding through the hub.  You want to grind the whole thing evenly, and NOT cut down into the shaft.  When you get it ground down far enough, the hub will split on it's own because of the press fit tension it's under.

After it's split like that, it slides off pretty easily.  It was after this point when installing the new pulley hub that I realized I'd really effed up.  In my efforts to remove the pulley, I'd actually broken my pump.  Somehow, while trying to pull the pulley off, I managed to push the shaft into the pump housing, and I actually cracked the rear cover of the housing.  Here's the area that broke(pic stolen from the internet)

Looking back, it happened while the pump was still on the car, and NOT when I was hammering the pulley off.  So, I needed a new pump.  Fortunately, this is a very common PS pump.  Nearly all manufacturers have used it in one form or another.  The Viper shares it with Jeeps, so a rebuilt pump from Napa was only $60, no Viper Tax on this one.  The new pump didn't come with a reservoir(they generally don't), so I had to transfer mine over.  It's held onto the pump body with two clippy things.They're pretty easy to get off.  just hook a screwdriver into the lock tab, pry up slightly, and lightly tap it off.  You can also see in this pic the broken rear cover.

With the pump and pulley out of the way, the other piece of the puzzle is the bracket.  The new Ipsco billet bracket is significantly beefier than the original.  Seeing the two together, it's pretty clear why the original ones can crack.

Installing the bracket is so straight forward that Ipsco barely covers it in their otherwise very well written pulley/bracket instructions.  Take three bolts off, swap bracket, put three bolts back on.  You don't even need to remove the pump from the car to do it.  Here's where it sits on the engine.

And finally, everything is back together.  The bracket is down low, and with my pulley painted black, everything still looks factory until you notice that the pulley is bolted on instead of pressed on.

 While I was at it, I flushed my PS fluid too.  It's easy to get most of it changed.  Suck the fluid out of the reservoir with a turkey baster, fill with fresh fluid, run car for 30 seconds, repeat as necessary until the fluid is is running clean.  You won't get absolutely all the old fluid out this way, but you'll get enough and it's far easier and less messy than the "pull off the return hose and run it into a bucket" method.