406oc.co.uk

This may be a question that has others have thought of before, but I couldn't see it posted before. So here goes.
Is it possible that there is any adjustment in the power steering to add some extra weight to it, I love my car but just find the steering a little to light. I am a recent returnee to the 406 fold and after driving Mondeo's for a while, do like the feel of the extra weight.
Any thoughts are welcome.

Hi, I don't want to state the obvious but have you checked the front tyre pressures?

yeah I agree check tyres there might be to much wind in them

I forgot to say ' welcome back to the 406 '. The Mondeo is a good car though.

Is it possible to adjust too though?

I had a FL 99 406 2L Petrol and that had heavier steering than my 00 3L V6. Was wondering if I were able to adjust the power steering to make it heavier.
Both were run on the same pressure tyres and everything.

The V6 has variable power steering which gets weightier at speed. One of my main annoyances with my ones was that the steering was too light on them. If you're handy with electronics, you could stick an oscilloscope on the line to the steering rack and put something in the way to alter the signal (I'm presuming it's a case of sampling an analogue voltage and increasing/decreasing output, but it could also be a case of altering a PWM duty cycle). If you're not so handy with electronics, you're stuck with it.

On the plus side, it is only lightness - once you get used to it you can still feel the wheels properly

The V6 has a current based signal which goes to the valve on the rack. It's at 6v too, not 12v.
The power steering ecu (back of the glovebox) sends about 900mA to the valve when the car is stationary (or doing less than 10kph) and this reduces to about 50mA at top speed. This is based on my own measurements after finding a dud valve on the rack, and confirmed by this graph.

If the ecu detects a fault in the valve on the rack, it defaults to 'medium assistance' (380mA ---Line C on the pic)

very interesting, but variable current?!

can someone with a better idea of ee than me explain why you'd do that?