ZX steering fault

This is the Forum for all your Citroen Technical Questions, Problems or Advice.

Moderator: RichardW

Post Reply
adrianeaton
Posts: 152
Joined: 06 Mar 2001, 17:57
Location: United Kingdom
My Cars:
Contact:

ZX steering fault

Post by adrianeaton »

We have an unusual problem with our ZX Furio. When manoeuvring on or near full lock the steering (power assisted) goes extremely heavy to the point it's a real effort to pull it back. Sometimes it helps to release the steering and try again but I've had the belt tension checked and no probs.
There's no other problem with the steering, the car handles perfectly and hasn't shown tendencies to do this at much above jogging pace.
Anybody come across this?
Adrian
jap
Posts: 3
Joined: 09 Mar 2001, 22:05
Location: United Kingdom
My Cars:

Post by jap »

Hi
i dont know if you managed to fix it, i had same prob on my volcane i changed pump oil and bled well and it went! hope this is of some use.
adrianeaton
Posts: 152
Joined: 06 Mar 2001, 17:57
Location: United Kingdom
My Cars:
Contact:

Post by adrianeaton »

Thanks for the advice - I'll get the steering damper checked out the next time it's serviced and if that's OK I'll get the fluid changed. It's possible that's the problem since the car has been stood a long time between drives so maybe the fluid is naff.
Adrian
Dave Burns
Posts: 1915
Joined: 14 May 2001, 05:30
Location: United Kingdom
My Cars:
x 2

Post by Dave Burns »

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=1 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>
We have an unusual problem with our ZX Furio. When manoeuvring on or near full lock the steering (power assisted) goes extremely heavy to the point it's a real effort to pull it back. Sometimes it helps to release the steering and try again but I've had the belt tension checked and no probs.
There's no other problem with the steering, the car handles perfectly and hasn't shown tendencies to do this at much above jogging pace.
Anybody come across this?
Adrian
Hello Adrian
I came across this problem three years ago on a ZX TD Aura, as it gets worse it will do it at high speed and at any time, the culprit is the power steering ram, it is known as a "double acting hydraulic ram" meaning that high pressure oil can be applied to one of it's two ports either to force the piston out or to the other port to force it back in taking the steering rack with it and assisting driver effort as it does so, some part of the piston head/seal assembly partially fails causing it to momentarily bind in the cylinder, I found this out the hard (and expensive) way firstly swapping the steering rack but using the original hydraulics, then swapping the valve, then lastly testing the ram knowing that blocking the ports off with my finger's and forcing the piston in and out by hand that it should generate pressure in one port and suck on the other depending on which direction it was being forced, but the piston went in and out with little resistance where it should have forced air out past my finger (oil having been drained out before hand) fitting a replacement ram needless to say cured it and my brother still has this car today.
Dave Burns

<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote><font size=4></font id=size4><font size=6></font id=size6><font size=4></font id=size4><font size=5></font id=size5><font size=4></font id=size4>
Post Reply