Pugglt Auld Jock said:

Martin, every time you describe what you're experiencing I just say to myself "yup! That's exactly what mine is like" Not a big effect, Doesn't stop you using the car but, as you say, annoying!

Thanks for your suggestions Koalar. It doesn't feel at all like worn bushings though. It's like a slight stiffness in the rack like when you slightly overtighten the slipper bushing (the thrust pad which is usually opposite the pinion). But with front wheels off the ground this one goes full lock to full lock Quite freely!

I know I'm not imagining this. I'm going to keep at it 'till I find out what it is and when I find it I'll be sure to let you all know. Quite an interesting challenge really. Lucky this is our "spare" car so I can mess about with it as much as I like and Mrs Jock can just go shopping/lunching with her pals in my Ibiza.

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Notchy bearings get my vote.

Freed of a set on an old mk2 punto.. made a big difference.

Unfortunately the front suspension on our panda had already been refreshed.. so no opportunity to chsnge:flush these ones.

koalar said:

I am getting lost with all these steering problems.


Are we talking about wander


Having to constantly correct the steering


Or veering constantly pulling to one side


Or is it just that if you put a degree to the right it keeps veering to the right and the same if you put a degree on the left.

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Sorry Koalar, only just picked up on what you are saying here. Mrs Jock is lunching with friends again - wonder how much she's costing me? - anyway she needed a lift up town as it's raining quite "wetly" this morning. Gave me a chance to really concentrate on this issue.

From your choices I'd say it's definitely the last option. For instance, you are driving along with the car heading slightly towards the pavement. You apply correction slightly (maybe only couple of degrees of wheel movement) to the right. Now you're heading off, very gently, towards the white line but just relaxing pressure on the steering wheel accomplishes nothing. You have to actually steer slightly left to recover but now you're heading back towards the kerb, so you coax the wheel slightly right again and so on, and on, and on! The only other thing I notice is that when you are actually on the move the wheel has a slightly "rubbery" feel. That is to say when you are making these very small corrective movements the feeling you experience is as if - well I find it difficult to explain, but imagine the universal joint on the steering column had been replaced by a rotoflex type rubber joint. Can you imagine that initial slight movement of the steering wheel, maybe a couple of degrees of turning, would slightly compress the rubber before transmitting the turning movement to the rack pinion? Well that's what it feels like. Strangely I don't really feel it if you rock the steering wheel when the car is standing still and you don't feel it when large movements of the wheel are made!

It sounds like you have some slack in the front suspension bushes and/or steering joints. The car can then be set up correctly on a laser system but the wheels will toe differently when you are driving.

You can roughly check the tracking by driving the car a mile or so. If it's tracking correctly, both edges of both front tyres will be equally warm. I suspect yours will be warmer on the inside edge (toeing out).

It's a rough test but "can" be used to set the tracking surprisingly accurately.

Edit: Another possibility is a worn or loose steering rack. Unusual but not impossible.

How's it feel if the tyres hit the rumble strip or cats eyes?

Parking into a tight space does the steering sometimes feel light?

Dave and Koalar, you've given me a number of things to think about there, some of which I've looked at but maybe not in as great a depth as I might. I built my own tracking tool many years ago and I haven't actually tried it on Becky yet as the tyres don't display any obvious signs of incorrect toe-in/out. But, of course, the garage could have done a bit of swapping round before I bought her so the wear patterns may be meaningless!

As I used the timing belt kit which was intended for the Punto on Becky (amazingly the same kit!) I'm waiting on a new kit to arrive for the Punto and will be doing it, and a "big" service, on the Punto, this week. After that I'll get back into Becky. - which would give me the chance to take pictures of my tracking tool and how to use it, if anyone is interested?

Regards
Jock

Woke up to sunshine streaming in the bedroom window this morning. No grandchildren today and Mrs Jock has her own "stuff" to do. So, after taking her a cup of tea and a biscuit to enjoy in bed (I really know how to treat a girl!) I decided to do some more "bonding" with Becky and see if she'll surrender some more secrets. My BOC cylinder hire bill was due to be payed so we set off for the local depot only to find it had closed down! Is nothing sacred! then up the road to Toolstation for some self amalgamating tape to wrap Becky's perished breather pipe. (I feel a Shop4Parts experience coming on). Then back along the sea front, through Leith and on past Newhaven to the big Morrisons to refuel (Mrs Jock collects the points) and so home. All the time feeling and thinking about the steering thing. - And feeling very pleased with the other aspects of how she's driving.

The more I drive her the more I'm convinced the effect I'm feeling is due to a "tightness" in something. Rack, Top mounts, I don't know, but not bushings and probably not ball joints.

Mrs J was busy with sewing things so grabbed a coffee (Aldi Cappuccino actually) and sandwich and went and sat on the ground beside Becky's OSF wheel whilst I munched. Now I've had a fairly good look at her front suspension when I was working on the timing belt but not to the extent of actually, close up, for a number of minutes, looking closely at a front tyre. I had pulled in with a lot of lock on earlier so the front tread was fully exposed. This is what I was confronted with as I drank my coffee and it got me just mildly excited.



So what was I looking at? Well first off the outside tread edges are more worn down (less depth of tread) than the inside. This as a stand alone observation may not be significant as you would expect to see that if the car had been cornered hard by the previous owner. However if you look very carefully you will notice that on each block of tread the edges to the left are slightly rounded off and the edges to the right are very sharply defined. Now if you take your fingers and rub them sideways, to and fro, over the tread, feeling the edges of the pattern as you go,







you should find both edges feel the same, but in this case the inside edges felt much more "catchy" and "sharp" than the outside. Now I examined the other front tyre and found it to be the same, outside more worn than inside and rounding of the outside of the tread blocks with "lipping" of the inside edges. This is a classic indication that the toe is wrongly set. In this case the symptoms indicate too much toe in (in other words the front tyres are snow plowing down the road, or, to put it another way the front wheels a knockneed! If the wear pattern is reversed there would be too much toe out which means the front wheels are splayed out. A further indication in this case is that the wear pattern on the NSF tyre is a little worse than the OSF which is logical as road camber causes you (and you don't really notice it) to steer, very slightly, to the right so the left front will exhibit more wear. This effect is reversed if you've got too much toe out.

So. OK. looks like my Toe settings are incorrect, but is this due to wear, or maybe damage to a component in the steering, or actually being set up wrongly, or what? I spent about an hour going very carefully over everything I could get my hands on, pushing, pulling, levering, twisting etc also checking for damage to ball joint rubber boots and components themselves (ie is something bent?). I was very pleased to see how good those front brakes are looking.



If you remember what they looked like when I stripped them, why, it's nothing short of a miracle! I was less pleased with the front road springs which look a bit rusty and the underneath view of the top spring mounts which also look a bit rough!



It was whilst looking at the front springs and the, somewhat limited, view of the spring top plates, that I went "up top" to examine what can be seen of the top mounts under the bonnet. Close examination clearly shows that the OSF top upper mounting cup Mr Haynes name for it!) is well proud of the body work



when compared to the NSF one, which is itself showing some clearance.



question for any knowledgeable gentlemen who might be reading this. should the cup be hard against the tower when new or will there always be some gap?

Where is all this leading I hear you ask? Well, I think I may have found the culprit behind the strange feel to the steering. I'm very suspicious of that OSF top mount. It's protruding much further into the engine bay than the NSF one. I think It'll have to come apart for inspection!

I've got a lot lined up over the next month or so though, so it's going to be a wee while before I can get stuck in. However, as I mentioned somewhere before, I have my own home made tracking gauge - a demonstration of which I have threatened to inflict upon you! So, now that I suspect Becky to be carrying a little too much toe in (The effects I'm seeing are not extreme so I don't think she's far out though) I'll use the gauge to check what she's set at right now. Correcting it, and I'm sure it will be needed, would be a waste of time before I refurbish the top mounts/springs/struts/and whatever else I find when I strip it all down.

I'm going to do the bit about using the tracking gauge in the "Tech Talk" section as it could be applicable to most cars. Might get time to do it tonight, maybe?

Regards to all
Jock

No the tip hat nuts don't screw drown into the strut mount

They only come into play when you jack the car up

A little toe in helps with straight line stability.

martinthefirst said:

Constant corrections a few degrees either side of straight ahead. No pulling or veering, just annoying.

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Well Martin, I've had a very interesting afternoon. My older boy at long long last rang me up and said I can have his Punto until Sunday. I've been trying to get my hands on it for about 6 months to do the timing belt. Anyway, I had to go across town (on our excellent busses) to pick it up and then about a 3/4 hour drive home with it, which I quite like as it allows me to really check it out. It's one of the first of the "new" Puntos first reg in 2012. Delphi electric steering - very similar to our Becky (2010 Panda). It felt exactly like the Panda in respect of it feeling a little dead and "wandery" in the straight ahead position but it did not have the "sticky" problem (lack of self centering) that the Panda has. The "top hats" on the top mounts are very close to the suspension turret tops, almost none of the gap my Panda is displaying.

There is the same slightly "rubbery" feeling the Panda has but the car can be normally controlled, when following a straight piece of road, by just relaxing effort or "leaning" slightly on the steering wheel until it's going in the direction you want. I think this is how the Panda should feel. Could well be those top mounts I think? I'm just going to have to do them!

Your tires look like they have been driven at low pressure for a long time. Now that (I presume) the right pressure is in you'll be driving on the center part of the tires.
Try some other wheels?tires on Becky before you tear anything apart.
And electric PS just feels "different".

gr J

Thanks for your post Jock. I haven't had time to investigate as I am currently fitting a rebuilt engine into my Morris Minor. I did photograph the top mounts today and they do look high, pics hopefully attached. Steering as bad as ever. Will definitely stay where it is left, a few degrees left or right of straight ahead. Definitely not the tyres or power steering at fault.

The picture on the right (can't tell which side of the car that is) does look high, suggesting the steering top bearing has failed. It's not a bad job to replace and you don't have to replace the strut.

martinthefirst said:

Thanks for your post Jock. I haven't had time to investigate as I am currently fitting a rebuilt engine into my Morris Minor. I did photograph the top mounts today and they do look high, pics hopefully attached. Steering as bad as ever. Will definitely stay where it is left, a few degrees left or right of straight ahead. Definitely not the tyres or power steering at fault.

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Wow Martin, those put mine in the shade. I think your's definitely qualify for the award of "Sh****d (worn out) Top Mount Of The Month"!

As I posted recently my older boy has at long last let me have his Punto to work on (cam belt kit and major service). He is not a mechanically minded person and I really only get to see his cars when something goes wrong or a service is so overdue I break down in tears! The belt (& water pump) change went smoothly - the Punto top engine mount is much easier to work with than our Panda one - but the service, which I finished this afternoon was vexing! The car was supposedly serviced by the dealer when he bought it over a year ago. Front brakes were tight, (just needed a good clean up and lube) spark plugs were binding up as I unscrewed them and I thought one was going to snap. The new ones went in with a little Aluslip. Now there's a thing, who lubes their plug threads and who doesn't? The manufacturer's have said for a number of years not to as you get a better electrical connection with a dry thread and they say corrosion is controlled by the plating on the threads? I'm not convinced. Still finding seized and semiseized plugs. Never knowingly had a problem with missfire resulting from lube.

Anyway back to the boy's Punto. By far the biggest problem has been removing the rear drums. I had the same problem on the Panda and all down to lack of, or negligent, service work. Both vehicles had such pronounced lips on the drums that they wouldn't clear the linings. Even with the handbrake cables completely disconnected. The fact that the self adjusters (a design I haven't seen before) were working perfectly and keeping the shoes well ramped up to the drums didn't help. I have temporarily taken a small grinding wheel to the drums and eliminated the lip, but new drums will be needed soon. At a guess I'd say the "service" consisted of an oil change and safety check. The valeter probably spent more time on it! - last proper service probably two years ago and even then may only have been a "minor".

And so, to return to the point of this post, as I was removing the battery to retrieve he 10mm socket I had carelessly droped down the back of it, I was looking at the top mounts, particularly the NS one, on the Punto and it occurred to me that as the rubber of the top mount ages and "relaxes" it must allow the top spring plate, which is close to it anyway, to close the gap. Could it be that our problem is being caused by the top spring plate (which has to swivel as you steer) rubbing up against the underside of the strut top mount (which, of course, stays fixed as it lives in the turret)? I think this could be a possibility and if so it would certainly give the symptoms we are experiencing. A few posts back someone described our symptoms even to the point of saying his wife, like mine, noticed nothing. But on changing the mounts the problem he was feeling went away! I will be looking very closely for "witness" marks when I strip Becky's mounts down

Morris Minors, I love 'em. Seriously considered buying a local traveler, until I saw it. Wood and Scottish weather are poor bedmates! I seem to remember, in the first garage I ever worked in, being given a brake master cylinder to do on one. Couldn't get my head round why the main bolts were put in the "wrong" way round so you had to drop the suspension torsion bar to remove them? A more experienced hand took pity on me and showed me how to use a very large and long lever (actually an old half shaft with the end heated and formed into a blunt chisel shape) to bend the torsion bar out of the way enough to slip the bolts out. It horrified me after all the careful lessons at college but was only the first of many "hand hints" I was to learn. (Big hammer and taper joints anyone?) Made myself a "big lever" soon afterwards and still have it and use it to this day. Apparently if you put the bolt in from the other side the end with the nut on protrudes enough that it can damage the torsion bar, forming a stress concentration which, of course, is death to a highly stressed and hardened torsion bar!
Regards
Jock

I've used a copper/carbon anti seize on spark plugs ever since I nearly snapped a very tight plug in a Yamaha 900 (air cooled plugs exposed to weather). They were only about 1 year / 10,000 miles old but would invariably start to missfire at 12,000 so never got forgotten.


The slight lubrication effect meant being careful how tight they were screwed in but never had a problem after that.

Yes, I have always used Copaslip, never had a problem.

Here's my tophat same on any I have looked at. I don't have an issue.

There will be no movement with the weight of the car holding it in place


Your looking at the wrong place for a wander issue. Imagin moving the top a mm forwards and backwards. The amount it moves at the bottom is very small as its divided by the length.

Movement in the suspension arm is magnified by is length. Not that I am say this is where your problem is. You will have to take the weight of each joint and place a crowbar above and below and wiggle to find where the wear is.

My Renault Espace with annoying rattle from the suspension was an easy enough job to drop the front struts out and check the bearings. In my case the problem was caused by the top retaining disc being loose.

Even on that car, with suspension under the dashboard, replacing the steering top bearings was an easy job. The most difficult bit was remembering to wrap a rag around the spanner handles so if they slipped they could not hit and crack the windscreen.

None of that is an issue on the Panda.

martinthefirst said:

I have a steering problem with my 2010 1.2 Panda. I have had the tracking checked, the tyres are in good order and at correct pressures. No problem with the power steering.

The problem is that when driving , the steering will not self centre from small deviations from straight ahead, ie if I set the steering slightly off from straight ahead it will stay there. I have to keep making small corrections. Larger turns of the wheel are self centered back OK. It is as if there is some stiffness in the system, perhaps a ball joint. Has any one else experienced this problem?

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After reading your Panda steering woes . I was experiencing exactly the smae fidgety self centering . or lack of .. effect .. the caster angle introduces a nice amount of weight to the steering .. BUT connecting the anti roll bar drop links to the Macpherson strut introduces enough load to overcome the caster angle straight line stability .. Relocating the drop links down onto the lower wishbone totally cures the weird / fidgety fight to keep the car in a straight line. for photos email me [email protected] .1980 Donnington GT champion .

koalar said:

First of all its not normal on the Panda

A tendency to wander all over the place, Will almost certainly be due to wear in the steering and or the suspension.

It's unlikely to be a top mount unless the roads are very bumpy


With no ticking noise I would start by inspecting the rubber bushs. There plenty of YouTube videos on doing this.

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All of you guys are obviously not technical . the twangy centering steering is caused by the anti roll bar drop link loads being fed into the Macpherson strut which is a A STEERING COMPONENT. Check out the photos I shortened the drop links and welded a lug onto the lower wishbone to take the anti roll bar forces . the added bonus is a more positive turn in to traffic islands when pressing on .The welded on lug is 5mm thick steel plate double welded . As you can see the whole front has to be removed to gain access to the front lower wishbone bolt . Quite an easy job . under 1/2 hour . increasing the caster angle may make the steering even nicer .. I have yet to check the factory caster settings. for more info and measurements email me [email protected].

Our 169 has also started to do this. Most noticable is the poor self centering on the steering. The top mount has a ball bearing race that is exposed to the elements. I considered greasing this on fitting and decided agaisnt on the basis that grit would be attracted to the bearing and not improve things. We had the entire front ssuspension replaced about 30K ago apart from the anti roll bar bushes. Im beginning to think there are some issues again. I will pull the struts again and have a look at the bearings in a few weekstime and report back how they have faired. Im aware of a little wear on the steering rack end on the near side. The steering turns easily and there are no noises from the strut tops but as I fitted KYB parts it wouldnt surprise me itf they have done their time. I know that on fitting the top mounts its not easy to torque the top nuts precisely.