Steering more heavy that should be?

Hi guys.. finally bought my first Landy yesterday- an '83 Series 3 109 ex MOD soft top GS. I seem to recall reading somewhere that after the loss of the Atlantic Conveyor in the Falklands, the MOD quickly bought up civvy 109s and 'Militarised' then. Is this true?

Anyway, the steering on this old bus is very stiff and heavy, not like other S3s I have driven. Tyres are standard 750x16s. I've not got it home yet so can't check presures but looks fine.

What order should I check out the steering in order of easy fix-expensive replacement? Can the steering be tightened up like in many older cars, and thus is it possible that someone over tightened it to take up play?

Thanks!

I think there may be adjustment at the steering box? but what I would do would be check everything for play, including the swivel housing king pins, and replace all the oils in the steering box and relay.

Oh god, where do you start?
With both front wheels off the ground everything should move reasonably freely - unless you have a steering damper. try disconnecting this first. Then I'd pop the ball joint off the bottom of the steering relay to isolate the steering from the axles. if the steering wheel is stiff disconnect the ball joint from the top of the relay which might isolate the fault to the steering box or relay. If the road wheels don't turn. keep removing ball joints until you isolate the problem.
Probable causes:-
Siezed steering damper
Siezed ball joint (track rod end)
Siezed or over adjusted steering box
Stiff swivel (no lubricant)
Stiff relay (no lubricant)
I'd put money on the relay - cheap to replace, can be impossible to remove!

Yeah it was a bit of a pain changing mine, I found undoing all the bolts (two on the top and four on the plate underneath) and then using a socket large enough to cover the spidle but small enough to pass through the chassis and a jack to jack it out of the chassis.

Lucky you. I had to leave the housing in situ and replace the internals. "Interesting" would be a good description.

Ok thanks for the replies! I'll check it out when I get it home. Didn't feel any play when I checked it out.

No play, on a landy series? There's a clue that something's wrong!

yeah!!

Plenty of oil though, so that was fine..

i like that..... looks fine..... my 109 had 15psi in the offside front when i bought it it looked fine fookin wasn't though!

I bought a Golf TDi thing for the wife last week and I thought it handled like a three legged pig compared to my BMW. Checked the pressures. Tyres looked fine. 10psi all round.... Some air tidied up the handling...

over tighening the steering damper is a little trick people try and use to fool MOT man... (not that it works!!!!)

...Haynes manual pretty useful on this... I'd make sure this is adjusted correctly first then go in a little deeper....

Ok, so I pick up the car near Hampton Court (King Henry VIII's gaff) and fill the tank up. The kiddy I bought it from advised me that the right side was best, and it appeared to have some juice in it so I topped it up and drove off. Got to 70 on the motorway, but temp needle was high so I eased it down to a steady 55mph. Temp needle didn't drop, but I put the heater on- which was better than I expected- just in case. Noisy, but not as noisy as expected. Rear and side visibility awful though.. Bouncy but not that bad I guess. Very crashy over bumps though. Brakes not the best but ok. Steering heavy but mainly off centre. No real play or wandering, just stiff as you turn.

Half way I pull into the services to check the fuel. The guage has been reading empty for ages now, but I pop open the driver's side tank and it's nearly full. Seems a lot better on fuel than I expected! Fuel tap says RH, even though it is leaning to the left passenger side, but i guess that's the way it is.

So... 20km from Swindon the thing starts to judder. Power drops, juddering gets worse, and then it slowly grinds to halt on the hard shoulder of the motorway. At night. In the middle of nowhere.

Crap.


Not over heated, but won't start at all.


I play with the Military lighting switch and get the hazard flashers and rear lights only, then get out under the bonnet. Everything looks fine. The all new electrics seem ok, so I whip out a spark plug and check for spark. yep, nice fat blue one. So I know that the engine is fine (everything turns over so not camchain, crank etc etc) Dizzy, coil, points, plugs fine. Which just leaves the fuel.

Carb looks fine, but I open it up and can't smell fuel... Check the fuel tanks. Drivers side ont he right is still nearly full, passenger on the left is dry. Just a few dregs. Hmmm... All the symptoms of a lack of fuel. I'm now suspecting that LH and RH of the tank switch is facing FROM the front, not SAT inside facing front. In other words, the full tank was LH not RH as the tap was on.. So I flick the tap and turn it over forever and a day. Nada.

That was when the Highway's Agency roll up behind.These guys first of all checked that my friend Susi and her kids were fine in the car behind (my lift and escort home) then asked me if I had any idea what was wrong with my heap. I told them the above and asked if they had any means of syphoning a little petrol from my tank to pour direct in the carb. Nothing, but they offered to guide Susi up to the next stop 8km away to get fuel and then bring her back the shortcut for Police vehicles only. So that's what we did. Getting bloody freezing now but thankfully I had my tanker suit in the wagon for getting underneath it.

After about 15mins they came back. I poured some in and eventually it fired up! YES!! Fuel starvation.. I had tried the manual fuel pump though but it hadn't worked, but I thought we'd cracked it. Poured almost all of the can into the empty tank and put some more int he carb to fire it up enough to suck it through. about 5 times of doing this and it ran on it's own suction. Problem solved.

And the guy said the dodge back in his RAF days was to put the tap in the middle between them both- that way it wouldn't start at all....

They followed us through the roadworks to the services, and once I'd filled the RH tank and was running fine, they drove off with a wave.

Throughly decent chaps who never asked where the tax disc was (somewhere on the floor actually) or about the MOT.. (Umm....) but just genuinely wanted to help.

So the bastard car got back after that...