Power Steering…

My word we forget how good decent power steering is!! 🙂

Had a few drives in some classics yesterday at The Great British Car Journey (as it’s just down the road from me).

Drove…

a) Capri Laser – always lusted after a Capri as a teenager. Only managed a 1.3 Escort Popular though! 🙂

Ruddy ‘ell it was terrible – the steering was so heavy you were mauling it around corners! That’s that bubble popped and off the ‘one day’ list.

b) Mini Cooper (late model, not ’60s one) – had minis as a teenager and always fancied one again. Great fun, I’d buy one again tomorrow if prices weren’t mad for nice ones. Heavy steering due to fat tyres but easily manageable. As good as I remember.

c) MGB GT – again, a nostalgia drive as my mum had two in the ’70s. Steering heavier than the mini, but still fine once used to it – this one has me thinking as decent ones can be had for £5k to £7k, so maybe one for the future and would sit well next to my ’02 MG TF.

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I remember our first car with power steering (Mk4 Ford Cortina 2.0 Ghia). Shortly after getting it, my dad very nearly drove into a hedge when turning into our drive as obviously they turn so much more quickly.

If you want truely heavy steering, try (if you can find one, I hope they’re all dead) a 1995 Ford Escort 1.8D. Truely horrible vehicle in every way.

people also forget stupidly heavy clutches. I had a Datsun that used to regularly need a new pedal box as it would snap under the force.

At the other end of the scale I remember hating a late 90s VW Passat, everything felt over assisted.

If I didn’t have my 951 I’d quite like an MGB, maybe with a later Rover or Honda Motor, although I’d need dry storage and shares in BOC, looking at the one my colleague bought, even the plastic rusts.

At the other end of the scale I remember hating a late 90s VW Passat, everything felt over assisted.

My dad had an Isuzu Trooper back in the ’80s – the power steering on that was horrendous so over assisted. Didn’t feel like the front wheels were connected to the steering wheel.

jamesozFull Member
If you want truely heavy steering, try (if you can find one, I hope they’re all dead) a 1995 Ford Escort 1.8D. Truely horrible vehicle in every way.

I had one of them! Had to stop for a rest halfway through a 3 point turn. If eventually did a cam belt, what a relief

Hhmm with modern cars being FWD and the steering geometry that they need plus the cost driven suspension compromises and it means that Power Steering is almost non-negotiable and modern systems are pretty good…

BUT a good non-assisted set up can feel sublime.  Light weight and so full of feedback. You can almost feel the tyres scrabbling for grip and you can definitely tell the second they start to slip. Much preferred but a rare thing to find these days :o(

I remember the power steering failing on a Citroen Xantia estate I had years ago, just leaving home on a weeks holiday. Obviously it was designed to had PAS for the reasons JAG mentions above. Now that was HEAVY steering for the week in the winding roads of Cornwall.

Just looked through the list of the available cars on that site and I think my family has owned about 20% of them. I remember most of them being terrible. Sadly, no Austin Princess/Diplomat or Morris Marina. At least the Rover Vitesse had that wonderful engine.

Just seen that I owned at least one of those: The MG Montego. A car of two halves. Good engine, terrible suspension and a flawed head gasket. Mine rotted away just after the suspension bushes failed.

Didn’t feel like the front wheels were connected to the steering wheel.

All modern cars feel like this to me. Joys of electric power steering rather than hydraulic.

Got power steering on my lawn mower (yep really)…. Never knew how good it could be!

BUT a good non-assisted set up can feel sublime.  Light weight and so full of feedback. You can almost feel the tyres scrabbling for grip and you can definitely tell the second they start to slip.

Yes, the original Minis were probably the most fun cars to drive ever, you just felt so connected to everything.

I remember back in the old Group A touring car days, the homologation specials would often be stripper models with Armstrong steering – often they would use the power steering ratio as well because it was faster. You’d need Popeye arms to park the things but, once they got up to speed, the directness of the manual steering was much preferred by the racing drivers. The clutches and brakes were beasts too – those racing drivers back then needed to be strong.

people also forget stupidly heavy clutches.

See: Vauxhall Zafira. For some reason those have a ridiculously heavy return spring on the clutch pedal, to the extent that crawling in heavy traffic, I would have to hold the steering wheel in my right hand, and press hard on my left knee to be able to hold the pedal down – I didn’t have the strength in my left knee to keep it pressed down without it. Apart from that, I always enjoyed driving them, especially the 1.7 Turbo petrol, a bit of a hooligan if given an injudicious amount of power.

Why not put it in neutral if you weren’t moving? Or have I misunderstood what you meant?

Pfft. We had an ex-army land rover 90 with fairly fat tyres, with no PAS. And it was a NA diesel engine. God, that was hard to manoeuvre!

I used to drive the old Mercedes T1 vans – the steering wasn’t just heavy, it was so heavy it didn’t self centre  – coming out of a corner you had to actively turn the wheel back to straight. You had to plan everything differently – you couldn’t change gear on a bend as steering was a two handed job.

We used to do 600 miles a fay in them – didn’t mind jobs going north/south as they’d usually be mostly motorway (although the oversize Luton bodies and NA diesel engines meant we’d be tearing along at 50mph flat out unless we could draft a coach) . But jobs going east/west would be 8-10 hours of l A roads and roundabouts – those  days would be quite a workout. Tennis elbow was a bit of a occupational hazard amongst the drivers I worked with. Occasionally we’d size up to 7.5t trucks for certain jobs – they were over assiststed to the extent that you had no feedback from the road at all – , but also with a sprung cab and sprung chair you were so disconnected from driving it actually felt like you were playing a video game. (luckily Grand Theft Auto hadn’t been invented back then )

Really though non assisted steering on old cars was fine. Power assistance just encourages bad habits – you just have to be moving when you steer.Thats how everyone drove without thinking about it. Turning the wheel when you’re stationary is just using the power assistance to scrub the rubber off your tyres.

I remember the power steering failing on a Citroen Xantia… Now that was HEAVY steering

I suspect there you didn’t just lose power steering, you were actively fighting against it.  Happened to me with a Cavalier with a leak on the PAS, when it ran dry it was near-impossible to drive.  I’ve owned a non-PAS Cav also so can compare “no PAS” with “broken PAS” with a degree of confidence.

Cars with power steering usually had a higher ratio steering box so the steering was quicker. When the power assistance failed, it would be heavier then manual steering with a lower ratio steering box.

Pfft. We had an ex-army land rover 90 with fairly fat tyres, with no PAS. And it was a NA diesel engine. God, that was hard to manoeuvre!

Yeah I had use of one for a couple of years (a LWB one) – the brakes were also next to useless and I once binned it into a hedge because the steering lock engaged (we had bypassed the key start and I forgot to put the key in the barrel). I had my foot stamped as hard as possible on the brakes and it just glided (un)gracefully to slow halt as it ploughed through the hedge and into a garden. Oops.