Hi. I'm dealing with an issue I know very little about: power steering.

I think it's failing, and I think it's the pump. I want to be sure that it's not something like the rack, though, that could fail completely and cause an accident.

Here are the symptoms:

The steering is sluggish and/or much harder than normal. This seemed to happen over time.

The pump makes a loud whining noise when it's at the left or right extremes, and even makes a milder noise when I turn it from center.

Turning the wheel gets progressively more difficult when turning from the center point, until it plateaus. The best way to describe it: it almost feels like there's a giant rubber band attached to the steering shaft, which gets wrapped around it the more you turn it, making it more difficult to turn as you go, with a weird springiness to it.

Help!