How do you know when your pwr steering pump is going?

My car starting to make this wierd, rubbing sound. Rubbery, not a metallic sound. Wheels straight ahead, only go 1 mph and turn wheel lightly, either direction, makes the noise. Already checked around wheels/brakes for any stuck foreign objects.
Any ideas guys?

Rubbery and not metallic...and only when you turn the wheels?? Weird. Something to do with the power steering pump *maybe*?

Is it a whine? It sounds like you might be refering to a loss of power steering pump fluid, in which case you probably have a leak. Check the fluid level, add if necessary.

Not a whine. It sounds like if you rubbed one rubber tire against another hard. The fluid is ok. Okay, better description: Take a rubber mallet and drag it across a tire.
Probably my steering pump is on the way out.

Check your ball joints and any front end bushings. Sounds like a ball joint to me.

hmm

Do you get any steering wheel shimmy, at any speed? Dare I say it may also be the steering rack..

Kevin:

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How do I know exactly if my ball joints are bad? What am I looking for?
I think you might be right, and that control arm/ball joints/bushings are in need of replacement.

A lot of people have noisy power steering.

I do... and its annoying as hell. When I turn my steering wheel I get an annoying whining sound. Its really sad because between a supercharger whine and power steering, I cant even hear my engine.

I've read a lot of people on here saying they have similar problems. Fluid is fine.

power steering whine is a ford thing!! out of the 30 or so ford cars and trucks i've owned over the years they all had a powersteering whine.If your rack goes bad it's been my experience that it will start to grab in the middle somewhere! You will be turning and all of the sudden it will get hard for a second and then loosen up. I would say if you here rubber to rubber check the torsion struts that bolt to the bottom of the spindle assembly. they have a rubber bushing on each side. and another set of rubber bushings that bolt to the body in front under the bumper. these are a very common a problem in our cars. they are relatively easy to change. good luck...Bill