Sunday 5 November 2017

Land Rover 101 power steering - Part 2

     I always followed this rule , that if you modify a car, it must be done in such a way that you could revert it , so in other words cutting chassis is a big no-no !

So with this in mind, the usual solutions that I've found to fit power steering to a 101 are not doable. So I opted to fit a steering from a Land Rover Santana. Now a couple of years ago those things where easy to find, but now, they are getting very rare ! Took me this long to get one:

  
Basically you have a double action cylinder, and a control valve in between the steering columm

I also had a new cylinder custom made because is was afraid that the 14 mm rod from the Santana wouldn't be up to the task of turning those big 101 tyres.

So now I'm in the process of fitting the cylinder to the car, for that purpose  I made this 
It attaches to the front diff. I'm not happy with this, but it will serve for the time being.










Saturday 15 April 2017

Land Rover 101 Power Steering - Part 1

 Well, one thing I noticed straight away with the 101 is how heavy the steering is, parking is a nightmare and every time I go out with the car, I've got to park it back into a really thigh place, so power steering is a real must !

with the experience of my previous conversion on a LR series 3, a electric pump is out question, so a mechanical as to be fitted.

I knew that the old, 2 door Range Rover from the 70s had power steering, so the search began for the power steering pump from one of those cars + the bracket for it , and the crackshaft pulley for the same engine.

this picture I found online, showed what I was looking for :
you can see the pump on the right of the picture, close to the water pump. On the 101 the alternator is in the place of the air con compressor of this picture.

First job, turn the distributor 180º , since the vacuum advance is the oposite way from the one on the picture above : before :

after :
I must confess I was worried to do it, but it went fine, carefully I marked the plug leads, marked carefully what cylinder was getting the spark ( it was nº1 ) so when I refited the distributor back I connected that cylinder lead to the new position, from there on I just followed the ignition order.

the pump itself was a straight forward affair.

The bracket for the pump :

In place :
 with the pump :

next step , modify the crankshaft pulley tho accept a second pulley.