Pressure Washer Built From Power Steering Pump

Pressure Washer Built From Power Steering Pump FARM HOME Miscellaneous 13-6-24 Dale Nelson, Blackduck, Minn., built his own portable high pressure washer from a car power steering pump and an old 1/4-hp electric washing machine motor. Nelson feeds water into the power steering pump with a garden hose. The electric motor belt-drives the pump. He fitted a heavy-duty 10-ft. long rubber hose over the pump's outgoing oil line and fitted a grease gun with a needlepoint nozzle to the end of the hose to serve as a spray nozzle. "It doesn't have as much pressure as commercial high pressure washers but it's been trouble-free and has plenty of pressure to clean engines and equipment," says Nelson, who's in the logging business. Nelson salvaged the power steering pump from a 1968 Ford LTD equipped with a 390 engine. He used the alternator and power steering brackets off the same car to connect the washing machine motor to the power steering pump. To gear down the motor, Nelson put a smaller pulley on the motor and a larger pulley, removed from the car's crankshaft, on the power steering pump. He then brazed a garden hose fitting onto the power steering pump's filler tube. "A pump reservoir surrounds the pump and is sealed on one end with a rubber 0-ring," says Nelson. "When I first started using the pump, water leaked out past the 0-ring. I solved the problem by brazing all the way around the seal so water couldn't leak out." To make the spray nozzle, Nelson ground the end of a 6-in. long grease gun needlepoint to make the hole bigger so it would make a wider spray pattern. He runs both hot and cold water through the sprayer. When Nelson isn't using the washer he empties all the water out of the pump and fills it with oil to keep it from rusting until he uses the washer again. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Dale Nelson, Ponemah Star Rt., Box 5, Blackduck, Minn. 56630 (ph 218 835-6410).

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