Steering behaviour

[jpyke]

Hi folks,

I've always had the world's lightest steering (ever since I got my Stag 18 months ago). I've suspected for a long time that the pins holding the torsion bar in the spool valve were worn/broken but finally got around to looking at it this weekend. I removed the rack and rebuilt the spool valve. As expected, the top roll pin was very mashed and was allowing the input shaft to turn quite a lot before the torsion bar was twisting. I replaced both roll pins with hardended steel dowel pins and then replaced all of the seals and refitted the rack (I also replaced the rack mounts with poly ones whilst it was off).

Behaviour before:

• Incredibly light steering - could rotate wheel with little finger (basically was 100% power assisted as the torsion bar wasnt being twisted at all);
• Absolutely no feel of the road whatsoever;
• No self centering - whenever you turned into a corner, you had to turn back out of it (if that makes sense).

Behaviour now:

• Quite a firm feel (mostly due to the new seals in the spool valve);
• Some feel of the road - but not a huge amount;
• Some effort to self centre - but not really until you turn more than "10 minutes" away from straight ahead;
• There is a slight bias to the left. It doesnt pull to the left per se, but I notice that it makes more effort to self-centre when you turn to the right than to the left. (I.e. if you turn a bit to the left then you have to turn back again, whereas if you do the same to the right you can feel it push back against you a bit).

It was supposed to be properly set up (in terms of tracking) before I removed the rack, and as I took it off including the ball joints I had hoped that I wouldnt affect the tracking. I suspect I'll need to get it looked at now due to this tendency to be happier to steer left than right.

I'd like to know what others' cars feel like to drive? What is the self centering like and how much road feel do you get? When I drove my Saab last night I noticed that any amount of deflection from straight ahead almost immediately results in it self centreing when you let go of the wheel. Does a properly set up Stag rack do this, or are they a little more vague?

Thanks!

[Stagdad]

Just done the roll pin job as well which has taken a lot of slop out of the feel but i also have the same non self centreing issue as you plus it feels to be tramling a bit sometimes but that could be down to tyres I guess.

Cheers Steve

[jpyke]

Hmm thats interesting to hear Steve.

I must admit that apart from the bias to the left mine did feel much better to drive, but it's still not as good as I'd hoped. I got the distinct impression that the whole power assistance thing is just not as advanced as on modern cars - to be expected I suppose. Whereas on a modern the power assistance hides in the background providing an overall decrease in effort when turning the wheel whilst still giving good road-feel, this is not the case with a Stag rack. I think the power assistance is not as subtle.

I've been planning for a while to have a stiffer torsion bar made in an attempt to get a bit more feedback from the road when driving. I thought I'd do this repair first though, in order to get a better idea for what a Stag rack should feel like. I think i'm still going to press ahead with the stiffer bar, but suspect that all it will do is make it feel heavier. If I go too far obviously it will feel like it has no assistance (which is not what I'm going for at all) so I think I'll hedge my bets and try 25% stiffer and see how it goes.

[V Mad]

Stags vary a lot in this respect. In my experience, the best ones are pretty good for a car of that era.

[jpyke]

I guess it can vary according to what make of spool valve is fitted to the rack. The Alford & Adler one has no adjustment to correct for centering, whereas the Adwest one does...

[pcoleman]

stags are 1960's engineering so wont be a patch on modern cars in terms of feel,just replaced all the lower bushes on the column to take out the play which has worked but surprise surprise has changed the "feel" radically and no longer self centres but is loads loads better to drive.

pete.c

[milothedog]

I had the same problem with my steering regards the self centering. and it was a bit on the heavy side. I bought an old rack for £20 which I stripped and rebuilt although I didn't do the the control valve as it was perfect for play and leaks. when I rebuilt it I did set up the pinion to rack properly with a DTI though and it has transformed the car, nice and light and self centers. re tyres I have 185/70/14 fitted but regards the self centering I would have thought that tyres would have no effect. With bias to one side try changing the wheels side to side sometimes because of the slight difference in the rolling radius and road camber this will cure it.

Ian

[tonypy1]

I have two Stags one has bags of feel and self centres brilliantly the other one didn't self centre with the original rack, but at least it had feel, now that it has a recon rack it is very light and still doesn't self centre. Once this Stag hits the road again I'll be looking at the front suspension set up in particular the castor angle.