MK 3.5 - Weight of Steering??

[Tazio77]

I picked up my 10 plate 2.0 Sport Tech RC last Saturday, and have put about 900 miles on her so far, just brought the car down to our place en France today, a little matter of 645 miles lol, car seems fine but I have one nag, the steering is heavy, much heavier than a previous MK 1. and a Mk 2, that I've owned, it has no finesse, you need to be manhandle it to move from the straight ahead position.


Is this normal?, or is it down to the alignment?

Any comments greatly appreciated.

[madasafrog666]

I have the same problem as you and have had mine a couple of months,its an 09 plate 2lt hard top sports all singing etc. It will be interesting to see what the experts on here think.
I had a porsche before and it was so light on the steering.....miss that!

[rfn]

My Mk3.5 doesn't feel any different from my previous Mk3 (in fact I swap in and out of them both regularly and don't notice any difference - my best mate owns the Mk3 now...).
Also, neither feel any different (really) to the Mk2.5 or Mk1 I owned previously, either?

Suggest getting a garage to check them out?

[Pints]

An obvious question but are your tyres correctly inflated?

[Tazio77]

Pints, obviously the tyres have been checked, and to add to the impressions, the steering weight is OK at slow speed just gets heavier at speed....

[Robstar111r]

Don't have a problem with mine. I've had it lowered on Eibach springs with the geo set up. It's great.

[Pints]

Tazio77 said:

Pints, obviously the tyres have been checked, and to add to the impressions, the steering weight is OK at slow speed just gets heavier at speed....

No offence meant, chap.

I had a similar problem when I picked up my mk3 and didn't think to check the pressures until a week into ownership.

[Tazio77]

Pints, it's OK no offence taken, the tyres were checked on the ride from the dealers, the nearsides were set at 1.7 bar, the offside were set at 2.0 bar...

Up until my trip to France I'd only been doing local running so the steering characteristic didn't really manifest itself until the long tedious motorway trip, it's great for stability but.....it ain't right.

[hornetrider]

Do you mean heavy, or slow requiring a lot of input?

[Eighteeteewhy]

Do the MK3s have some sort of speed sensitive steering?

[hornetrider]

No, but alignment affects how fast the car steers. Out of the box from the dealer my steering was really quick, makes the car responsive but twitchy. I then had a WIM fast road geo which sets front and rear to toe in. This slows the steering which initially feels strange, however the car is super planted and you quickly get used to the bigger steering inputs required.

[Craikeybaby]

I can't say I noticed any difference between my mk1 (with PAS) and mk3.5 in the steering, I was actually surprised at how similar the cars felt to drive.