leak in power steering hose/line

[rschleicher]

I have been getting a few drops on the garage floor of what I THINK is power steering fluid. (Car is a 1991 420SEL (W126).) But it is dripping from farther forward than I would expect, from in front of the radiator. There is a metal tube/line that runs from the driver side, in front of the bottom edge of the radiator, and then doubles back. This line is oily, and is where the drip seems to come from. It looks like the line is from the power steering system. Is it basically a simple "cooler" for the power steering fluid? Or am I just not seeing where this line is routed from correctly?

What I can't tell yet is whether this metal line is actually leaking (seems unlikely), or if the leak is actually from somewhere else around the PS reservoir/pump area (or one of the hoses), and is just dripping onto the metal line. (On the other hand, it seems strange that the fluid would wind its way all the way to where the metal line runs along the front of the radiator, even if that is the lowest point of the metal line.)

Anyone seen anything like this before? I'm going to clean everything off as best I can, and then try to see if I can spot the source of the leak.

For what it's worth, the transmission fluid line to the transmission fluid cooler in the radiator area is clean/dry looking. And I don't really see any sign of leaking from the radiator, nor from the transmission cooler itself. But maybe that's what the real culprit is, given the location of the oily mess on the metal line (at the front lower edge of the radiator).