I recently took my 1996 Plymouth Grand Voyager in to Canadian Tire (Had to
use them as my mother was using her Canadian tire card to pay for the
repairs)
to have a new serpentine belt put on as the one on the van was coming apart
in pieces. I also noticed that there was power steering fluid leaking from
somewhere as well. I asked them to check it out for me. They said it needed
an engine shampoo to see the leak as there was so much oil around.After
shampooing they discovered that a piece of the belt has wrapped around the
shaft of the power steering pump and took out the seal.I gave them the go
ahead to fix the pump with a new pump. They said it would be 3.4 hours to
replace the pump as per the book value.I waited from 10:30 a.m. until 8:45
p.m. to get my van back.The tech was working on it for the whole time and
did not work on any other vehicles. As I was waiting for him to give me my
keys back he had the van still on the hoist double checking his work he
discovered a leak coming from the rack and pinion. This was not just a leak
but was gushing out of the seal area on the rack.This was not leaking at all
when it went into the shop and was not leaking when he checked out the power
steering system after the shampoo.

My question is this what could have caused the seal to blow in the rack and
pinion. The shop is not taking any responsibility for the leak and said that
it was just something that went on it's own. Is it possible that the new
pump was defective and caused a pressure build up high enough to blow out
the seal? The next day the store service manager called and said that he
investigated and stated that it was not the shops fault and it would cost me
another $700.00 to replace the rack with a new one. I needed my van and said
to go ahead under protest that they should be covering the cost as they
caused the rack to fail. When I went in to the shop the next day the tech's
where working on replacing the rack when they told me that they had to
replace the new power steering pump they put in the day before with a new
pump from the Chrysler Dealership as this pump was also leaking.

Are my suspicions right that the failure of the first pump caused the
failure of the rack and pinion.
Any insight would be very helpful and any ideas how to handle taking this
further would be very much appreciated.

Thanks for your help..

Tom.

P.S. My van is broke down in my yard because the new serpentine belt has
come off and the shop said that I would have to pay for the expense of the
towing the van to the shop and let them check it out to see if it was anyway
their fault that the belt came off. They said that snow build up was
probably the cause of the belt coming off and that they would not cover
putting the belt back on. The manager said I would have to pay for this as
well. My van was not driven in the snow as it was sitting in my driveway for
2 days during the blizzard we had. It was only after finished shovelling
that I started my van and tried to back out when I realised that I had no
power steering at all. When I looked in the engine compartment the belt was
laying there off the pulleys. There was no snow or ice build up inside the
engine compartment at all. I have owned this van for 4 years now and the
belt has never come off before at all. Kind of strange why it is now coming
off...?