Series PAS Conversion

[aaronledwidge]

I thought i would pop this up on here too as it may help other people thinking of a similar conversion i did this last january although there are still a few bits i would like to neaten up it should be a reasonable reference guide. In this i decided to use a P38 pump as it seemed the neatest option, then mated it to a defender column and intermediate shaft with a bit of fettling. As i already had a 200tdi the pump was a direct fit for me but here goes.

Firstly we got the landy set up in the barn.then we proceeded to remove the wing ready to start stripping. That left us with plenty of access to the steering components.

IMAG1577 by darransandwich, on Flickr
so next up is to get all the parts of the steering stripped ready for mocking up the new assembly.

So once this was off i whipped off the wheel


IMAG1579 by darransandwich, on Flickr
Then removed all the steering components. I cut of the shaft from the box to the relay and then unbolted and removed the shaft and box as one. This gave me enough room to remove the pitman arms from the old relay.
This left me with a blank canvas to work with.


IMAG1580 by darransandwich, on Flickr

These are the old and new columns for comparison. it looks like the new column is a little longer. Its a late td5 column so in good shape with nice smooth bearings.


IMAG1581 by darransandwich, on Flickr

Oh also as you can see whipping off the wing revealed a little hole in the bulkhead so i welded that up. this was where the inner wing meets the bulkhead so a bit of a trap for dirt.

IMAG1578 by darransandwich, on Flickr
all patched up.

IMAG1592 by darransandwich, on Flickr
then painted up with a thick layer of underseal to help keep it protected.

IMAG1602 by darransandwich, on Flickr

I then started to mock up the steering system, slotted in the TD5 column and popped the box as far forward on the chassis as possible. then balanced the shaft in between to see how much it would need to be shortened.

sorry its a bit blurry. but thats the first mock up.

IMAG1587 by darransandwich, on Flickr
to be honest even this rough mock up got me pretty chuffed but there is still loads of work to do before it will be good enough.

In this pic its just resting on the chassis using some 3/8 extension bars but it gave me a chance to check the height of the bottom pitman arm against the one on the old relay. it showed id need to raise this one a little to make sure the arm wouldn't foul the springs.

[aaronledwidge]

I then set about sorting the mounting bracket for the box, i went out and bought some 6mm plate and then marked and drilled some 13mm holes in it, this gave a little clearance for the bolts and fitted pretty well to be honest.

IMAG1593 by darransandwich, on Flickr

I then welded the plate to the chassis and fitted a bit of 6mm plate to the top of the chassis to space out the crush tube.

This was the plate all mounted up.

IMAG1600 by darransandwich, on Flickr

Then i mounted on the box to see how it would look. To be honest i was pretty chuffed with that.

IMAG1594 by darransandwich, on Flickr

Once this was done i counted the turns to find the neutral position of the box( this was surprisingly off center) and test fitted the wheel for clearance. I have loads

IMAG1598 by darransandwich, on Flickr

SO next is mounting the collumn and shortening the intermediate steering shaft.

For mounting the collumn we found a bit of box section, drilled and bolted it up to the shaft. here is a pic of it clamped on to test the alignment.

IMAG1604 by darransandwich, on Flickr

then wleded up, drilled and painted.

IMAG1615 by darransandwich, on Flickr

so with the box and collum mounted i had to make up the intermediat shaft, the steering box had a different spline to the collumn i had so i split the two UJ's and then made one with the correct spline.

first i ground away most of the material around th bearing cup

IMAG1555 by darransandwich, on Flickr

Then i split the last bit with some gentle persuasion with a hammer. which left the uj

free from the shaft and intact

IMAG1559 by darransandwich, on Flickr

I then pressed the bearings out of the p38 uj and fitted the two together.

IMAG1561 by darransandwich, on Flickr

With all the bits ready to fit together i mocked up the fitting and then cut the intermediat shaft to length, this then gave me the steering mechanics in one piece for the first time.

IMAG1608 by darransandwich, on Flickr

to be honest i am pretty chuffed with the way it looks, seems pretty smart to me, the

[aaronledwidge]

next task is to make up the steering arms and find out how long they need to be. for the moment im going to join the series arm to the p38 one, ill get a custom one made up when i can find a supplier

so the gap was measured up. and the two tubs cut to length with a 10mm gap in between them. this was to make space fro a joining piece to be turned up out of some solid bar as the two tubes were different in diameter.

IMAG1618 by darransandwich, on Flickr.

then we test fitted the pieces together.

IMAG1609 by darransandwich, on Flickr

We were happy with the lengt of the tube and allignment was well within adjustment so the pieces were welded together.

IMAG1639 by darransandwich, on Flickr

then the bar was at least in one piece and looked like this, please excuse the stick welds. i bloody ran out of mig gas ha ha. these were courtessy of my mate mike as his stick welding is far better than mine. You can also see in the background my wing has became a make shift table. I think mike wants the landy in long term :wack:

IMAG1630 by darransandwich, on Flickr

IMAG1610 by darransandwich, on Flickr

all in and test fitted. were goign to strengthen up the bar by milling into the solid bar and welding it up for added strength.

So once the bar was all welded up and tested again i first checked to see if i could hit lock on both sides. if this hadnt worked i would have needed to source a longer pitman arm i guess but thankfully all was ok and there is still a fair bit of era movement so the bar was removed and put in the milling machine.

IMAG1631 by darransandwich, on Flickr

we then milled the channels through the tube and into the bar so that there was roughly a third of each material showing. This would give us a nice area to weld into and

IMAG1634 by darransandwich, on Flickr

these were welded up and ground flat and then the whole bar was fitted and painted black, hopefully this should eb a nice strong bar and get my by long enough to get a custom rod making up. If anyone could recomend a place or has a pair of lh and right hand ball joint taps that would be great.

[aaronledwidge]

The pump was a nice easy mount as it just went back in the mounting point on the TDi and i had a cutom High pressure pipe made up and Nuneaton Hose and Fittings, a pretty nice place from what I found out. No idea if i overpaid for it :wack: as I have no idea what it should cost. the return feed i made up with some banjo fittings off ebay and some braided fuel pipe. this was then sealed up with dowty seals and looked like this when it was all done.

IMAG1614 by darransandwich, on Flickr

IMAG1621 by darransandwich, on Flickr

The most exciting thing about this was I now was able to fill the system and test the steering.

So i filled the system and fired her up, below is a little video and i am dead chuffed, it could do with a bit of a bleed but its already so much lighter that the series ever was. I have quite a few more jobs to do before ill be back on the road but this was a great place to stop as it was the 23rd of december by the time i got here :wack: Still had my gifts to buy and the missus may have hung me if i had missed christmas to build my landy.

Here is a vid of the system all fired up and its pretty powerful it makes the body twist on the leaf springs at full lock and is nice and easy to turn so im dead chuffed.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/14144290@N04/8312702050/

I took some pocs on full lock too as i have read loads about people saying the box may reduce clearance but i seem to have bags of room.

IMAG1645 by darransandwich, on Flickr

IMAG1646 by darransandwich, on Flickr

Cheers Mark, thats my mates farm saying that its not local to me ha ha, 70 miles away. as for the MOT that was also my understanding so im going to make up a new bar as soon as i can. hopefully the tester will be nice if i havn't managed in time but the bar was a get me home job as i had no idea how long it would be until it was fitted.

The lock is set there as i have a much bigger set of wheels that i offroad with. there isnt masses more room before the leaf but more than i have at the moment, ill get me some thinner off road tyres when i have the cash.

So the last few pics from the build are here.

So the first thing i did was make up a new battery tray, This was made out of a little angle iron and some threaded bar;

IMAG1649 by darransandwich, on Flickr

then with the battery attached

IMAG1652 by darransandwich, on Flickr

So once this was done i had to run all the pipes and adapt the wings to accept the steering rods. the wings were cut around the box as below.

IMAG1656 by darransandwich, on Flickr

The hoses were p clipped to the chassis across the front cross member

IMAG1655 by darransandwich, on Flickr

then once it was all done i had a little pose with it.

IMAG1665 by darransandwich, on Flickr

[Daan]

Hi Aaron, welcome to the forum.

Good set of posts, are you always doing that many jobs at once?

Daan

[aaronledwidge]

Hey daan, I do keep myself busy but No as I said at the top I did this last Christmas ha ha. it was on sxoc and landy zone so I thought it might help out some members. I think I did this over 4 or 5 days but that was a lot of fiddling in the dark as I hadn't seen much on how people did the conversion.

Most of this year has been spent rebuilding my old 200sx from a shell up which means the old landy has been a little neglected.

http://www.sxoc.com/vbb/showthread.php?546228-Seriously-Mint-S13-project-34k

That's the build thread for it but its pretty long now ha ha.

Aaron

[Arjan]

Interesting !

We went the IH scout route many years ago and a very good conversion it is.

[aaronledwidge]

I'm not aware of the IH scout route? What does that entail.

[ejparrott]

International Harvester...big thing over the pond, I think you'll find it on expeditionlandrover.something

[Bowie69]

IH Scouts are one of my dream trucks I reckon... Not many over here though

[impressionist]

Not wishing to detract from any of the original post but........

I'm looking at the various options of fitting power steering to Series 3 which I used to use for RTVs (and hope to use again) so this post is obviously of interest but I bought the April Classic Land Rover Magazine last week and found an article on a Lightweight restoration which had included the fitting of a P38 steering box.

Unusually the box has been fitted inside the chassis in the area of the original steering relay. The article isn't very detailed and the only photo isn't particularly helpful. but the box appears to be mounted diagonally in the angle created by the inner chassis rail and front crossmember.

Anyone got any more information or ideas on this?

[Gremlin]

Hmmmm...........lhd box in a rhd vehicle? Had that idea once, but took the traditional 4 bolt option instead.

G

[Snagger]

Not wishing to detract from any of the original post but........

I'm looking at the various options of fitting power steering to Series 3 which I used to use for RTVs (and hope to use again) so this post is obviously of interest but I bought the April Classic Land Rover Magazine last week and found an article on a Lightweight restoration which had included the fitting of a P38 steering box.

Unusually the box has been fitted inside the chassis in the area of the original steering relay. The article isn't very detailed and the only photo isn't particularly helpful. but the box appears to be mounted diagonally in the angle created by the inner chassis rail and front crossmember.

Anyone got any more information or ideas on this?

I have been a member of the same Lightweight club as Vinny for a while. He has promised me some photos of his PAS fit, so with his permssion I'll either post them up here or will post a link if our mods are happy with that.

[Soren Frimodt]

Not wishing to detract from any of the original post but........

I'm looking at the various options of fitting power steering to Series 3 which I used to use for RTVs (and hope to use again) so this post is obviously of interest but I bought the April Classic Land Rover Magazine last week and found an article on a Lightweight restoration which had included the fitting of a P38 steering box.

Unusually the box has been fitted inside the chassis in the area of the original steering relay. The article isn't very detailed and the only photo isn't particularly helpful. but the box appears to be mounted diagonally in the angle created by the inner chassis rail and front crossmember.

Anyone got any more information or ideas on this?

That is basically how I did it, except for the fact that my 80" is LHD so I mounted a RHD P38 box on the inside. You can clearly see pictures of the process in my thread in the members vehicles section.

I can see how it is more involving than fitting it to the outside, in fact much more involving. However the installation looks much cleaner IMO and you don't have to modify your inner wing or have a steering box that gets filled with muck every time you get off the paved surfaces. However I also did it because I like to run big tyres with little offset, this is not a problem for many others so their tyres can easily clear an outboard mounted box (just as OP)

[impressionist]

Thanks for the replies.

Fitting a P38 box outside the chassis isn't an option as it will almost certainly foul if the vehicle goes back to being used as a trialler so I'll certainly take a look at Soren Frimodt's thread.

There's something unusual in the lightweight featured in the magazine though because the box doesn't appear to sit with it's face flat against the inner chassis rail and I'm really intrigued.

If Snagger could get some photos or a link to them I'd be very interested to see them.

Cheers guys

[Snagger]

Here we go - a link to the discussion in the Lightweight Club forum about Vinny's Lightweight and P38 steering on page 2: http://www.lightweightlandroverclub.net/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5472&sid=663f4620492d9e10a1a6ae31328ebac6

[Soren Frimodt]

That is one clever way of mounting that steering box! Only thing is that the twist/sheering force is less "controlled" than by using the four 14mm bolts on each corner of the square cast mounting that the P38 box has originally. However this is somewhat overdesigned and will only ever sheer at severe overloads in highspeed accidents etc. So I'm not afraid that Vinny's install will fail on any sort of regular use. Just something worth considering for the more "hardcore" offroaders. (If there even are any left of those hardcore leafers)

[discomikey]

Hats off to that bloke!! finally a way to fit a PAS box to a galv chassis without taking away any of that precious coating!

still think its for sissies though

[discomikey]

That is one clever way of mounting that steering box! Only thing is that the twist/sheering force is less "controlled" than by using the four 14mm bolts on each corner of the square cast mounting that the P38 box has originally. However this is somewhat overdesigned and will only ever sheer at severe overloads in highspeed accidents etc. So I'm not afraid that Vinny's install will fail on any sort of regular use. Just something worth considering for the more "hardcore" offroaders. (If there even are any left of those hardcore leafers)

while i agree it doesent look as strong, in practise i bet it would probably be as strong if not stronger, yes, ok the lower 4 bolts are in shear not tension/compression but the way that the top 2 bolts are designed they are supported from both sides and sandwiched rather than just butted up to one face.

P.S. Brian gets some pretty hard beatings out on the pay and play sites too

[Bowie69]

P.S. Brian gets some pretty hard beatings out on the pay and play sites too

... and from silly moos too!

[discomikey]

*Dislike*

[missingsid]

Really like the lightweight fitment, no chassis mod and possibly a standard drag link?

Surely twisting the box (for engine clearance I think?) must alter the avaiable lock on one side?

Marc

[Gazzar]

Not if the steering drop arm is twisted to compensate, afterall the p38a drop arm isn't straight ahead when the wheels are in the straight ahead position anyway.

What concerns me greatly about this conversion, not knocking it, just worried, is the modifications to the drop arm.

Bending it, I can cope with, but welding it? How much does it cost to get that tested/ x-rayed/certified?

Still, it proves that it can be done.

I wonder if there was a better PAS box for the job, something with more off-side offset? And with the drop shaft at the end of the box to avoid cutting up the front panel.....

When (if) I get going on my 109 vapour build I think I'll still bolt the p38a box to the outside of the chassis - but use the relay hole as part of the bracketry. May not be so neat, but it will be slightly less "non-stock".

[gatso]

hi ,saying hello and to say milli in classic land rover mag is mine ,,,the steering mod took some thought but turned out simple really ,, she has done 300 miles with no faults ,,if this mod is of use to anyone and you require more piccys, help or discussion just ask on here or the lightweight forum or you are more than welcome to come and have a butchers at it ,,, and a brew ,,,regards vinny

[discomikey]

somewhere in the world there will be a drop arm which will fit, there must be. if not im sure its fairly easy to get one cast and machined up from the correct grade steel just not sure about one off costs for that, if you find a company that specializes maybe they either have a suitable current one or will have the setup to make a cheaper one off part.