Steering far too heavy in VT

[muvro]

You can purchase the solenoid seperately, i wouldnt try repairing it, very thin wires. The connector to unplug it is clipped to the front of the strut tower, kind of in front of the ABS unit. You will need to unbolt the 2 securing bolts, 19mm socket underneath and an 18mm nut on top. You can just pull rack back enough so that you can get a spanner/shifter/multigrips onto the solenoid.

Don Sutton wrote:As for teflons crumbling are you sure this is not by contaminants in the oil imbedding in the teflon? The teflon material has been the same for zonks but there was a dimensional change from the VS to VT because of a different design of gear and then later I think VT2 that the piston clearance was increased to accomodate foreign material and therefore the thickness of the teflon had to be increased but only the piston teflon. The sleeve teflons have remained the same since the mid 80's.

If the VT is a series 1 5ltr, then it will be the teflon crumbling. Trust me ive cleaned out a few systems and rebuilt many pumps.

Ken

Great thanks for that.

It's a L67.

I'll try my old solenoid in there (my car also has an L67), if that doesn't fix the problem, We'll have to look elsewhere.

Thanks for the pointers, I found them out about 6 months ago changing the rack in my car. Wasn't the easiest in my garage... HAHAHA

Cheers,

Tark

 

[Don Sutton]

Dont know about the Falcons, i havent worked on many Fords since i stopped working at service station workshops. I had only seen the teflon block up components on V8s, not V6s or Gen3s.
ken

The main difference between the Falcon AU gear and the Holden VT gear apart from one being variable ratio and having a cast iron valve housing is the oil used. The Falcon used Mobil 424 which is technically a better oil for a power steering in that it is a straight out hydraulic oil with high lubricity. The Commodore uses Dexron III well at least that was what we were required to test it with by Holden. The same basic materials used were the same across Ford, Holden, Toyota and Mitsubishi with oils being different for all four.

The reason I asked the question in the first place is that I did a study into premature failure of VT gears and it was found by buying the genuine pump and lines from a Holden dealer and using these to drive the gear on a wear test machine that the gear being driven by the car system failed while the gear being driven by the test rig didn't. This was repeated over several tests. Washing down of the components and examining the returned gears which failed under warranty found shot in all of them. The shot damaged the surface of the power bore, the piston and obviously the teflon which broke up. Once the gear was damaged by the shot and the bore was damaged the gear is rendered unserviceable. This problem with the shot in the pump is the reason that the piston size and teflon was changed to accomodate an increased quantity and make it more sesilient to damage. Holden eventually changed pump supplier.