The smart thing to do is a complete flush at 60,000-80,000 miles and a one-bottle flush every 20,000-30,000 miles after that. Forget that the Honda shop manual does not mention it. A leaking rack will cost at least $800 for a rem replacement.
Forget the turkey baster. The fill hole in Honda PSF reservoirs is only 2 cm Ø and most basters won't fit. And if they did fit, their capacity would be too small, and you will spend more time than its worth sucking the PSF out of the reservoir. (You'll be needing to drain about 400 cc of fluid from the reservoir.) I suggest a battery filler something like this ($4.99 at Advance Auto)
Use only Honda PSF. You will need
five bottles (12 fl oz each) for a complete flush, and
one additional bottle for top-off, for a total of
six Honda 12 fl oz PCF bottles.
Here is the procedure:
(1)
Do not disconnect any hoses from the PSF reservoir.
(2) Remove the PSF from the reservoir using the battery filler.
(3) Add one bottle (12 fl oz = 355 cc) of Honda PSF to the reservoir.
(4) With power off, move the steering wheel slowly to full left, followed by slowly to full right. What you are doing is pushing the old fluid out one end of the steering rack into the reservoir and drawing in new fluid into the steering rack at the opposite end. When you turn the steering wheel in the opposite direction, you are reversing the inflow/outflow of the new/old fluid at the two ends of the steering rack. (It helps to have the front wheels raised off the floor when you do this.)
(5) Repeat the above full left/full right turning about ten times.
(6) Then turn the engine on and repeat the turning about a half dozen more times to flush out the fluid in the circular pump (the pump's capacity is relatively small compared to the combined capacity of the steering rack and reservoir.)
The total fluid capacity of Honda's power steer system is 1.1 L. After you have completed Steps (2)-(6) above, you will have replaced roughly 400 cc of old fluid with exactly 355 cc of new fluid so that the system now consists of 355/1100 or 32% of new fluid. With each iteration of steps 2 through 6 above, the percentage of new fluid in the PSF rises as follows:
Let
N be the number or repetitions of steps 2-6. Then
N -- percent new fluid in PSF
1 -- 32 %
2 -- 54 %
3 -- 69 %
4 -- 79 %
5 -- 86 %
6 -- 90 %
I flush my cars through five cycles, but I can buy Honda PSF relatively cheaply at about $3.00 a bottle. Retail it is probably $5-$6 per bottle; some folks mat want to stop at 3-4 flushes.
One final remark: Between (roughly) the third and fourth iterations the car should be taken on the road at 2000 rpm to get some fluid through the spring loaded pressure relief valves in the pump.
Honda dealerships use the hose and bucket method described elsewhere in these posts, but that method almost always gets some air into the system, which is a pain. For home DIYers, I recommend the method described above. It takes longer, but there is no spillage and no air gets into the system. PSF is flammable.