Unequal Steering Lock in Australia

C

chrisyork

Active Member
Rather an odd one this. I keep in phone touch with an engineer in Australia who, at 84 yrs doesn't use this forum.

He has two owners in the Australian Rover Club with P6's that have a very poor turning circle in one direction only. Both are power steering V8's so don't have a huge amount of adjustments possible to be wrong. One is evidently so bad as to preclude turning the car in a normal road and to need the owner to seek out a T junction to do his three point turn in!

The cars drive OK otherwise which would appear to rule out accident damage to the suspension pick ups. Investigations are just underway in earnest on the first car, with the only discrepency found to date being a steering box with 3.3 turns lock to lock instead of the book 3.5 . The box is now about to have its innards inspected for any other problems.

Anyone heard of anything like this before?

Chris
 
Is it possible on this design for the rack to be fitted non-central ?
The stearing stops on the bulkhead will prevent over-turning in one direction, and maybe the rack itself is preventing full lock in the other ? (assuming its not just the stearing stop which is stopping the lock)

Just a thought.
 
After checking the lockstops, I would look at the positioning of the drop arm on the output shaft of the box. When in the correct position the drop arm should be fitted in such a position that the road wheels are in the straight ahead position when the box is in the centre of its range of movement.Un fortunately I don't think you're going to be able to do this without removing the box.This would also explain the different number of turns lock to lock.
At a guess I would say it's not an internal problem.
 
Further to what I've said above and curiosity having got the better of me, I've had a look in the factory manual and in the PAS box strip down it says just remove & then re-fit the drop arm, nothing about setting in the correct position, which would lead me to believe they have a master spline, and if so it's unlikely it could be re-fitted incorrectly. I have had the droparm nut come loose but that caused excess play in the steering.
So if it hasn't got a master spline that would be my guess, if it has I might have to reassess my guess that it's not internal.
Shame it's in Australia, sounds like one I'd like to sort out just for old times sake. :D
 
Once again to prove the workshop manuals dont help most of the time, the Haynes manual says mark the PAS droparm before removing, implying there is not a master spline so that is not much help either.
Going off on a bit of a tangent, I'm not a great believer in coincidences, so as there must be far fewer P6's in Australia than the UK and I haven't come across this problem here (UK) so to get 2 cars there known to the same person with the same virtually unheard of problem gives me a hunch that both cars could have been worked on and had the same job done on them, by the same person who made the same mistake on both cars.
Back to the fault itself, if you let me know what the state of play is (has the steering box been removed etc.) I can tell you how to diagnose the cause of the problem. ( I just don't want to type it all out if you've already stripped it out) as with the benefit of a bit of thought I can tell you what I think is causing the trouble.
 
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