MK1 GOLF Power steering for £40 :)

After much reading around the interweb i came across a post by ronin on vagdrivers so thanks to him and his conversion i did mine, only difference being that he had a cable change box where as i have retained the rod change, i have also seen the corsa electric column conversion but there is a lot of fabrication to do so thought i would stick to minimal fabrication work and install a PAS rack from a toyota starlet first searched the scrap yards / ebay for a toyota starlet and eventually found one in a scrap yard not to far away, only word of advice if your going to try this conversion is find a starlet with the engine out as my one was a nightmare to get out had to cut the hole that the steering rack goes through bigger to get the rack out in one piece heres what i came home with (also got the rubber mounts and mounting brackets and the uj that fits the rack and pressure pipe)
 
got home took the steering rack out of my car and tried the fit, the starlet rack fits onto the original mounts but the shaft to connect it to the steering column is to close to the bulkhead to go through the hole so the first bit of modification was to fabricate some mounts to tilt it forward a little, for this i got some metal box section and cut it down on an angle (as in pic below) i drilled a hole on the bottom end of the bracket so i could retain the original bottom bolt for ease and for location purposes, then i cut the top bolt off my bulk head and welded a new one into my new bracket

then i bolted the bracket with the bottom nut so i know they were in the right place and seem welded them onto my bulkhead like so

next i set about fabricating the universal joints to join the rack and steering column together, ronin on his post used a toyota corrola part for this but it does not fit the vw steering column properly so i got the part from the starlet that obviously is a good fit onto the rack then i got the vw one from my car and cut it down, the vw end is to fat to fit into the starlet uj so i turned it down a little, (i did this with a bench gringer and slowly rotated it until it was a real tight fit into the starlet part) i then hammered it tightened the nut on the starlet part as tight as it would go and welded around the shaft, please if trying this get someone who is a good welder to do this for you this part is safety critical !!
heres the finished product with the size you need it to be The black arrow is where it needs welding, red arrow is where i just filled it in with weld for extra strength

then i test fitted the rack but didn't like the clearance i had in the whole in the bulk head so i cut the whole bigger (again as in pic below with the size you need)

i then got a mk2 golf rubber boot because that it also wider than the mk1 item and fitted that, you can see the in the next picture the size difference, so that cleared up the fitting of the rack and any clearance issues

next job was to refit the rod change items to the rack, i cut the part i needed off the original rack and test fitted it to the starlet rack but to my disapointment the starlet rack was fatter than the golf rack so more fabrication needed, the part of the rod change linkage that it welded to the rack was held in position and measured to see what was needed, it only needed extending 15mm so i welded a piece of flat metal to the end of it so i could move the hole forward original size

extended

this was then welded into position (when welding onto the steering rack pull the rack as if you were steering to one end because if its in the middle you can damage the seals inside the rack) and then obviously because you have extended the bottom part of the linkage you need to pack the top part out to match i used a bit of aluminium tube as in pic below

 .. then stick it all back in and together like so

the starlet track rod ends are the same profile as the vw ones so i put those back in and as much as they are the same profile they are a little longer so on the top you get a few mm gap from the arm to the rubber dust seal (not big deal in my opinion) and at the bottom where you bolt it in with the castle nut i had to put a washer onto it just so that the whole in the track rod end was in line with the castelations on the nut to put the spilt pin through as for pipe work i used the starlet pressure pipe which is long enough if you run it around the left side of the bay (engine cambelt end) and the banjo fitting is the right size for the vw PAS pump  then i brought some hose from halfrauds as a return from pump to resavoir run around the right hand side of the bay to a mk2 bottle then back to the rack, i'll post a pic now engine is back out, finally fired up the engine and test drove it and its as sweet as a nut ….. Matt-

just to add that i missed out on is when you make the braket to mount it onto your bulkhead you then use the starlet rubber mounts and the starlet metal u brackets as the vw one don't fit around the fatter starlet rack and if you think that when doing a 16v conversion the downpipes are close to the original rack then this is obviously the same so make sure you heatwrap them and also, and this for some reason really did shock me is that although i had to make the bracket for the rod change bigger to fit around the starlet rack which in effect was pushing the whole rod change mechanism forward 15mm my gear change is still perfect and needed no alterations what so ever .. bonus !!! so there you go a fully working power steering conversion for your beloved mk1 that cost me a whole £40 Matt

Very interesting mate, this should be a sticky!

I have just completed this conversion on my cabby and it works great. The only difference on mine was that i used the toyota resovior.

i did at first to just changed to the mk2 one later

this should me a sticky as its a top conversion ……

This is my kinda thread, good job!

Agree, it should be pulled over to the FAQ Threads, stickied or similar

So why the starlet rack, are the steering arms the same lengtht as the vw ones so as to avoid bumpsteer, what model starlet, are they plentifull in scrap yards/ebay.

because starlet rack is same width and same arm length as mk1 rack as in pic below



racks are around if you look, not sure on model years but its a toyota starlet rack i went off a photo to find mine

Will have to look into this, fed up spending lots of money buying ready made items.

you just get robbed with ready made stuff ……….

only thing i don't know about this conversion is how to get a pas pump running on a dx or even a lesser cc engine, i did this on a 16v conversion and the engine came with a pas pump already on it .. i'll look into it

I dont like where the pump sits when in a mk 1 so i was thinking of using an electric pump of saxo or probably others, could also sit it near the rack to cut down on length of hoses, another advantage of this is will not need to buy the mk1 rubber bellows/gaiter which is now being sold for silly money.

Matt said

i did at first to just changed to the mk2 one later

this should me a sticky as its a top conversion ……

From “MK1 GOLF Power steering for £40 :)”

Hi all I need helpppp!
I'm doing this toyota steering conversion.
I've now installed it but looking at where the resiviour pipes come of the rack,looks 
Close to the position of the down pipe I can't be shore as the engine is not in 1.8t k04. Has any one moved this or added a elbow please help!
Cheers mat for your thread great read.
Syeve

take it to a local hydraulics place, they'll probably have something to remake the pipes lower profile for you or move them behind rack or whatever. make a template for how you want them out of stiff wire so they know the shape to make the new pipes if you get them made up with hard line sections

 

rubjonny said

take it to a local hydraulics place, they'll probably have something to remake the pipes lower profile for you or move them behind rack or whatever. make a template for how you want them out of stiff wire so they know the shape to make the new pipes if you get them made up with hard line sections

 cheers john I should of put up a pic so here it is. can I swap the pipe position with the silver bit with two rubber hoses coming of it? ,if that make sense. 
Steve

you cant swap pipes about on the rack, but that looks to be the low pressure feed from the reservoir? if so all you need to do is find a barbed fitting that will fit then any old rubber hose that can cope with power steering fluid and route it where you like.

A proper banjo type fitting would be best as it comes out at a right angle and can be rotated to whatever position is best then nip the bolt up to seal it, the bottle could go on the driver side in your case that would stop the hose passing the down pipe at all.

summat like this, though the fun part is working out thread size! then you just choose right size barb. I cant see why you would need 2 pipes like whats on your rack, the VW racks all just use a single hose:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Turbocharger-Water-Banjo-Fitting-M14x1-5-to-1-4-Hose-Barb-/130884473543

Or as I say make up a shaped metal pipe routed well away from the exhaust heat that would sort it too.

actually no, looking at the other pics I see the bottle is on the other side. so what are those 2 rubber pieps for? some kind of switch? pressure reducer? it can probably be blanked off by the looks of it

rubjonny said

actually no, looking at the other pics I see the bottle is on the other side. so what are those 2 rubber pieps for? some kind of switch? pressure reducer? it can probably be blanked off by the looks of it

 cheers john i will blank it of then your a legend.
Steve

I wouldnt say it can definitly be blocked, but I cant see what purpose it can serve sicne we have the feed and return lines plus reservoir on the other side?  

for what its worth, this is the very conversion I had. I did enjoy it for four years, but the slightly different steering geometry for the starlet rack had my car losing traction on anything other than a dry straight road.  'Toe Out on Turning'.  A phrase I'd never heard before November.

I've removed the PAS rack and fitted a new standard VW one. With my engine conversion of last year, the loss of traction just got too much, too often.  It's in getting new gearbox, clutch, manifold etc fitted and I've yet to try it out in the real world, but I'm looking forward to those twisties once more!

I hope you don't have the same issues I did, but I can't see how it can be avoided.  I bought the starlet rack new four years ago, it's presently lying at Bedrock VW in Motherwell, free to anyone wishing to collect. or maybe for the price of a curry… :-)

Craigt said

for what its worth, this is the very conversion I had. I did enjoy it for four years, but the slightly different steering geometry for the starlet rack had my car losing traction on anything other than a dry straight road.  'Toe Out on Turning'.  A phrase I'd never heard before November.

I've removed the PAS rack and fitted a new standard VW one. With my engine conversion of last year, the loss of traction just got too much, too often.  It's in getting new gearbox, clutch, manifold etc fitted and I've yet to try it out in the real world, but I'm looking forward to those twisties once more!

I hope you don't have the same issues I did, but I can't see how it can be avoided.  I bought the starlet rack new four years ago, it's presently lying at Bedrock VW in Motherwell, free to anyone wishing to collect. or maybe for the price of a curry… :-)

I've done a few of these power steering conversions over the years since I first fitted one to my own 260bhp mk1 gti 1.8t back in 2008, I do appreciate all feedback both positive and negative so that we can all develop and improve the conversion if necessary and yours is the first complaint I've ever heard about the conversion, are you sure it was a starlet/glanza/paseo rack that you had fitted? a corolla rack of the same era is very similar but wider and has slightly different hard lines running across it

Can you post a picture of your steering rack?

Ronan