Pah Steern

[Des]

After 5 years and 50K I found myself yearning for power steering on my old rape-spec campervan, not so much a case that I need to man up, it's the amount of lock to lock bollocks I have to carry out every time I need to park in this congested shithole corner of England. I managed to gather all these bits together,

 

 

seriously scarce rocking horse shit these days, I used to work on quite a few of the VW shit Transponders back in the day, the only ones I recall having PAS were the minibus things, not sure all of them did either, so not a big surprise that it took forever to find it all. Right old can of worms mind, front swivels are different, the track rod ends mount closer to the centreline of where the kingpin would be were this a proper vehicle, here's PAS and non PAS,

 

 

This adds up to less steering turns lock to lock and allows for the shorter distance the powered rack traverses, I had considered briefly if I could weld weld up the holes to relocate them, but dismissed the idea as it could get me deaded. Next hurdle, the bastarding calipers are different with the swivels having plain holes rather than threads for mounting.

 

 

Holes would need making smaller and threading, more bollocks to get me snuffed if it's not done right, discs differ as well, but of course they would, factory must get really boring, churning out the same old same old, who could blame some kraut designer breaking up the monotony by tossing a coin to decide whether to shuffle off to the bogs for a cheeky jostle, or  to redesign something that's just fine as it is while ignoring Engines in the wrong end dumpkoff!

So the brakes changed from double pot to single slidey mid eighties, fanny ballbagging tastic.

Pah rack has a longer pinion because of the torque sensing gubbins, so there's a shorter column involved, luckily this is only an intermediate shaft as there's a right angle transfer box up front before we get anywhere near the steering wheel, I guess this adds a bit of angle as there's one proper UJ in place of the rearmost of the three flappy rubber disc couplings, the joint that came with the rack was a little notchy, freed up after an overnight oil dunking but by now I'm fairly invested in clinging to life so hunted a new one, odd sized pig of a bastard to obtain naturally. The pump just bolted onto the motor no drama, swapped the front pulley for one with the multiple vees and hung an old belt on, then onto the pipework front to rear, originally would be metal and very hard work to fit, had my local hose place make up the high pressure in rubber, added a couple of feet to the measurement I made which turned out just right, not an inch too long or short, damned close call that, used large bore fuel hose for the return, turned up a spigot thing for the rack end and the other went right to the reservoir. Poundshop had yoga mats in a nice dense 1/4'' closed cell foam, cut into strips and layered with Lidl 2'' double sided tape was perfect for wrapping round the pipes where cable tied along the way, to make like sudocream anti chafing. There's a petrol tank halfway along the pipes route, an absolute bastard feeding the buggers over it, faffed around forever and once through I wasn't happy so dropped tank out and secured the hoses nice and neat, tank had a couple of thick crusty rust patches on the topside, started scraping at them, sort of thing a grinder would scuzz off in a flash but can't cos it's a perol tank and kaboom, dicked around with it for a while then said fuck this and asked the internet how much for a new one, buttons was the reply so downed tools for a couple of days. Tank arrived, hoofed it in and went for a drive.

Seemingly simple job snowballed into a kakaphoney of expense and bollocks, but now it's behind me I think worthwhile, far better control when taking sharp corners slowly without having to do the brute force thing, and parking, just awesome, fully lock to lock in a flash, slotting into a space in one go like a boss.

[explosive-cabbage]

Good work!

Any normal human would have sacked it off and gone for a pint!

[tooSavvy]

FCUK.... and these days MotMan will sack you off for welding a 'strengthening plate' under the kingpin on an IMP wishbone

 

 

TS