Thank you.

It could be as simple as a leaky hose or a loose fitting.

Glad somebody chimed in with some common sense.

Rules of asking advice on how to get something fixed on the internet,

1. Ppl always chime in with the most expensive and time consuming method.

2. 99% of the time, the fix is something simple and quick to do.

3. If the first advice somebody gives you is to replace without trying to diagnose, ignore them completely.

the fluid was at the borderline for low. it was not completely drained. is that consistent with a leak ? a small one?

Depends how long it's been leaking, but that's the best place to start. Whenever it was filled, it should have been filled above the lower-limit.

Buy a new car. :luck:

if this becomes a few hundred dollar fix, then yes i will buy something new.

Let's take care of a $300 problem by spending $20,000 to make it go away.
:lol:

who said 20k ?
this car would probably fetch 1k at this point.

so it is not worth it. some dealerships are offering 4-7 k credit guaranteed for a car.

Yup. If to your knowledge it hasn't been checked in the previous 100k miles, most likely it's a fairly trivial leak.

However, *in general* the power steering should still behave normally if you're at the lower limit. The symptoms made me assume it had run very low. What sort of weird noise did it make when the problem started?

If you're sitting in the car, parked, with the engine on, and turn the wheel from lock-to-lock, do you hear a squealing like the belt is slipping? A noise almost like a moan? A clunking?

Is the thumping rhythmic, in sync with the engine, or does it change depending on how quickly you turn the wheel? You could have a problem in your front suspension, with the P/S problem being a symptom rather than a cause.

ok yesterday i syphoned (turkey baster) out the fluid and replaced with fresh stuff 3 times. every time the stuff came out like chocolate syrup. i guess there is a lot of this stuff in the system because what i was doing seemed to not make a dent in it.

the car when on makes a noise now. the noise is the wheel that one of the belts is on. the wheel shakes while spinning about .5" i am guessing this is the power steering belt / wheel. if the cat is sitting parked i cannot turn it from lock to lock. if start to turn the wheel the power steering tries to assist and fails. it is a rythmic droning like a failing robot in a bad sci fi film.