Power Steering mystery

[David Reilly]

We have a new member from Australia (P1B4351BW). His car does not have power steering. It has the ‘P’ prefix on the data plate, but the chassis number in the bonnet catch channel does not.

There are holes where the power steering reservoir would be normally attached with rubber bungs plugging them (see attached photo).

Question 1: Were the holes in the fenders of all cars and plugged on those without power steering fitted?

Question 2: Does anyone have a car where the two chassis numbers differ in prefix (or suffix)?

Question 3: As the two chassis numbers differed when the car left the factory, why and how might it have occurred?

[Glyn Ruck]

Scab workers in the middle of a strike in UK factories.

[cass3958]

As Glyn says it might be a case of the car being set for PAS but when it came to actually fit it in the factory the parts were not available due to a component manufactures strike. The car would then have been assembled as a non PAS car.
Another thought is that it left the factory with PAS and someone has changed to an alternator. The PAS pump has been removed along with all its components as there was no longer a drive on the back of the alternator and the car has been changed back to a non PAS steering box.
Lastly has the car had a body swap. Taking a non PAS rust free shell and putting the VIN plate from a PAS car on the bulkhead although in this scenario the numbers on the VIN plate and the slam panel would be different not just excluding the "P".

[Orlando St.R]

My car was originally non-PAS and had the holes present with what look like the remains of rubber bungs.

IMG_2468_crop_2.JPG (132.09 KiB) Viewed 2797 times

Seems most likely to have been an error at time of manufacture.

Definitely an odd one!

[karlm]

Hi all,

Sorry to dig up an old thread. I didn't realise David had posted this here. I'm the owner of P1B4351BW and have got a bit further with the mystery, and after another weekend of lovely driving decided to do something about getting the power steering sorted out as my arms aren't getting any stronger.

The car has the P on the plate and the factory have stated that it definitely left with power steering so I now have two working theories:

1. That it was shipped with PS but the dealership took it out and swapped it into a Mk2 or another S-Type with perhaps a different colour or configuration and it would have been much faster to do that than wait for a correctly configured car to arrive. I have some evidence in dealership records that this did take place.

2. That it was assembled during a parts strike as mentioned and went out as a non-PS car and the records weren't changed.

My understanding is that the PS front ends have an indent, so thus the presence or not of that will most likely be definitive of what occurred. So a question - was it the case that the non-ps models had no indent in the front end?

[cass3958]

It depends on the year. From around September 1967 the S Type was fitted with the Adwest Variomatic power steering box. Prior to this they were fitted with the Burman Type 2. The PAS pump, reservoir and the way it was powered off the back of the alternator did not change.
The Adwest PAS box is larger than the Burman and required the "Dent" in the cross member so it sat correctly, where as the Burman did not require it so there would not have been one. The 420 was fitted with the Adwest from new in 1966 so the cross member from the 420 can be used on the S Type with its Adwest PAS system as an upgrade but if you wanted to upgrade from a Burman to an Adwest using the original pre 1967 S Type cross member you would have to cut the dent then weld it up as per the 1967-1968 factory spec.