When there's something to search for, and it's on the internet, I get pretty obsessed.
An imported Japanese vehicle with lots of obscure parts therefore lends itself to this sort of time-consuming activity.
You see, after I won the bid, and the mechanic confirmed that yes, it did need a new power steering pump, the hunt was on!
I briefly touched on this in the previous post. It only took me a few paragraphs to explain myself, but it really took up way more of my time that I let on.
To start, I jumped on partsouq.com. This site is great, because it offers very excellent exploded diagrams of nearly the entire vehicle. Powertrain, accessories, electrical, it's all there!
This map of the entire vehicle wasn't actually specific to my RV. Rather it was for the Isuzu Fargo truck (van?) that existed before it was hacked up and converted to an RV. But majoritively all of the parts were still present and therefore accurately represented in these diagrams.
All one has to do is click through the various systems until they dig down to the part they think is needed.
In my case, I did strongly desire a power steering pump.
At first, my beginner understanding of Partsouq let me only to an exploded diagram of the pump. I spent far too long staring at this blown up assembly, trying to figure out which parts might be available and which I would want to try for a rebuild.
It took quite a while before I basically gave up on these small parts. Even though they were largely clickable and existed as real parts sometime back in the '90s, nowadays they were nowhere to be found.
I sent a few emails to other parts vendors (see my prior post) and came up empty handed.
Eventually, after digging around for some time longer, I found that the entire pump itself was represented in another exploded diagram of a broader steering system category!
If you look near the center, you'll see Item #1. That's the pump I needed!
Obviously enough, this part number turned out to be the same one that the mechanic back in Japan found I needed to order. It was also the one that would cost around $900 new!
Most power steering pumps for Isuzus of this generation run about $100. So I knew it was not financially practical to pursue this option, even though the perfectionist in me wanted to do so. Period correct Isuzu Fargos aren't a thing, so I didn't need to keep in authentic!
Knowing the actual pump part number, I pushed my Google-Fu to the limits. Glimmers of people selling this pump as a used item popped up on very foreign websites. Most of the languages were Cyrillic in one form or another. I admit to knowing zero about language, but basically many of them were Russian or near neighbors of Russia.
But lo and behold, they WERE selling the pump I needed!
So close, and yet so far.
I made numerous attempts to contact these various sellers. But their oddly complicated methods of contacting (I needed a foreign phone number) and impossible to solve Captchas (because my keyboard could hardly handle their alphabet) made it hard to reach them.
I haven't heard back yet. I figure they wouldn't want to bother shipping overseas anyway. I wouldn't, at least.
Another avenue took me to an Indian automotive forum. They seemed super techy, knew their diesels, and also spoke of the rare 4FG1 engine that my Fargo has.
But again a road block. I tried to register for their exclusive forum and was denied!
I want to try again, but possibly the same issues would come up. Who would want to ship a cheap old pump to the US from another country?
So now I think I've finally come to accept not getting an OEM pump.
I have an angle on a similar pump, and some fine folks at PlanetIsuzoo seem to assure me that if I can just mount it up proper, it will work fine. I think that's convincing enough!
And so my pump hunt comes to a close.
But I cannot rest, for there are many more parts to be had!
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