Loading and effects on the steering

[Jabbawocky]

HI all

We did about 2000Km in Barney before the fan belt tensioner failed and we had to leave her in France. The only problem I had before the breakdown was with Barney’s steering. Fully loaded and with a full tank of fuel, the steering was very twitchy, with terrible bump steer. I shifted as much weight forward as I could and filled the two jerry cans on the front. This improved the situation and it continued to improve as the fuel tank emptied. I checked the steering for the mot a couple of weeks before the trip and the garage never commented? We re did the tracking before I set off and a I checked again whilst on holiday.

Did I put to much weight in the cooker unit and wardrobe?
Have I got too much weight on the roof?
Is this a something other owners have noticed?
Have other owners altered the steering to improve it?
has anyone fitted a steering damper?

Let me know how your Land Rover Dormobile drives.

Cheers Mick

[MrJones]

Hello
if I understand , what you had on this car is (in French ) ” shimmy ” . A lot of série have this ,it is not serious and it is not a Dormobile problem . You can load the car as you want .
For “shimmy” : it’s easy to repare , the problem come from swivel pins , they are not enough tighten .
Put front whells on the jack , take off whells , disconnect ball joints , you can see that front hubs are very free and it’s because they are too free that you have shimmy .
Withdraw the upper swivel pin , there are some shims , remove one of them and refit le swivel , and whatch if it is less free, the hub must give (few) resistance when you move it with hands , if it’s too much refit this shim and remove an other thiner . If it’s always too free , remove a second shim .
It is good to change railko
The manual gives 3.6 to 4.5 for the resistance on the hub , on an old car it is not enough

I hope you understand my english , I kneed practice
Regards
Michel

[Jabbawocky]

HI Michel

Thanks for the reply. Don’t think this is just the swivels as these were re-set just before we set off, but I will be checking everything again. They were set just tighter than the book suggests.

As I said above, altering the loading of the vehicle did have a major effect on the steering.

Have you had your Dormobile fully loaded?

Cheers Mick

[MrJones]

Mick
our Dormobile is often loaded when we travel , but only two persons inside , overload would be bad more for suspension than steering .Of course , steering loose probably come for all along the steering chain , you have to check steering column , steering relay and ball joints , but if all that is ok and not really new , it is by thighting the swivel that you could compensate . Don’t forget to check parallelism of the front wheels .
About loading , my car is with original leafs at the back ( the normal leafs for 109 sw with 1 leaf more ) + aeons , the stability is good .
Michel

[jkhackney]

Hi Mick,

That’s a better side-view of Barney than I had posted on the Series 2 forum. The difference in height in the rear compared to mine is marked.

My own guesses are not enough toe-in or the chassis angle affecting the castor.

Did you check the steering arms to see if one is bent? I’d think that’s more likely than a bent axle. I couldn’t get mine to steer well using the measurements for the tie rod and drag link lengths, because I think something is bent (there’s a big dent in my chassis over the front axle, and the front axle is S3, thought the swivels (at least the brakes) are S2A, so I suspect a previous owner had an accident. A bent swivel arm wouldn’t surprise me). So I used a very long straightedge to estimate 2mm of toe-in at the wheel edge.

Maybe you can find an S3 and figure out how the steering damping attaches, but I suspect that this damper was tuned to react to hard jolts from offroad driving rather than the gradual low-force wandering caused by tires tracking incorrectly on paved roads.

Maybe you could do a quick test to change the angle of the chassis by borrowing some rear wheels from someone’s 88″ and taking a test drive? Or, even some 15″ wheels if you have any around. That would lower the rear by at least 1″ and tell you immediately if the angle of the chassis is the main factor. If so, then you take out the spring leaf, I guess.

Like I said, mine is of course low in the rear, and steers very heavy. The steering wheel only returns to straight after a very fast hairpin. In normal driving, like a traffic circle, it won’t self-center entirely and I have to help it. It tracks a straight line; that is, it doesn’t wander but it keeps going the direction I set it in, and this is rarely perfectly straight, becaues I have some play in the steering box. I never notice any difference with respect to the load in the vehicle, but in front I never had more than a spare wheel on the bonnet.

My swivel damping is intentionally set very low (as a test) … undo the drag links and the swivels just spin around on their own. My relay is rebuilt with all new parts, is full and doesnt’ lose oil, and turns with the prescribed drag if I undo the drag links. If I unhook the steering box from its linkage, I can spin the steering wheel and it goes freely from one end of the worm gear to the other, about 4 revolutions, as the book says. If the vehicle is jacked up in front and all the steering components are connected, I can spin the steering wheel hard and it will turn at least 1 revolution.

Yet on the road the steering is really heavy. On gravel however the vehicle steers how I’d like it to always steer; light and responsive.

The steering on my near-new one-owner S3 109 sixpot Station from a fire department (with no steering damper) had no play at all and was light as a feather. I use it as a reference for the “ideal”. Its springs were rusted in place but had the original height all round. It always had a tire on the bonnet. It tracked straight and it had substantial wear on the outer 1″ of the front tires … a lot of toe-in. I never measured the toe-in, but it steered so well that I didn’t need to. I had also rebuilt those steering swivels, but never touched the relay or steering box. The tires were Goodyear Wrangler 7.50R16’s.

I hope you figure it out. Good thing Barney is slow in returning home so you have time to clean up your shop 😉

-Jeremy

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