I love driving the FD on the street. But, there are times when it does feel too darty (steering too overboosted). How do you tell if it's "too darty"? I'm not able to drive someone elses since I live in BFE. Is this one reason people remove the power steering? Should I look for an alignment problem (toe-in, etc.)? or something else?

 

Keep in mind the FD has relatively massively wide wheels/tires for its size/weight, and therefor any uneven pavement causes the car to want to "track" to it.
Have you checked your alignment? Are you running the right pressure in your tires? The power steering on the FD is speed-sensitive, in that most of the boost-assist is eliminated at speed. The steering is mainly boosted at parking lot speeds, so to speak.

 

It should feel very centered going down the highway. If you have larger than stock wheels, many times they will want to follow the grooves in the road.

Have the alignment checked and check the air pressure in the tires. Either of those will cause sloppy handling and ride.

Dale

 

Any chance this is a powersteering issue?

I've never had powersteering on my FD but I've seen a few non-FD cars that acted all kinds of squirrely when PS pumps were going bad (1 had a slipping belt, 1 had a bad bearing in the pulley and 1 had low fluid)

Check out all those things and see if that'll turn up anything. Best advice I could give ya.

 

+1

 

Very sensitive to alignment and tire pressure.

 

This describes mine to a "T"

 

Yea mine follows road grooves like no tomorrow. It does also depend on the design of the tired. My Yokohama es100 track anything and everything.

 

darty is toe.

set your front toe: toed in just a hair less than 1/8th inch.

if your front has no toe or is toed out it will be very darty. rear toe should be zero.

tire pressure generally won't effect dartyness. if one tire is low it will exert a constant "turn" in that direction as it is providing a constant drag.

not to say tire pressure isn't very important. run 30 cold fr and 27 cold rear.

wider than stock wheels/tires do make the front "hunt" on irregular road surfaces... just dial in a touch more fr toe in.

good luck,

howard

 

Thanks for everyone's comments....it's greatly appreciated

 

I bought a 2001 camaro when I turned 16. I put zo6 wheels and tires on it..265 front 295 rear. At 16 I had a provisional license and could not drive anyone else under 25 in the car or something...so my sister had to drive it when we had to go somewhere. We went on a back road and I thought we were going to die. I was contemplating jumping out.

The front end was very slightly toed out. It was enough to just about change lanes on you if you weren't being careful. On a 2 lane road with a deep ditch on one side and constant head on traffic.....

A tick of front toe in and you could just about let go of the wheel on the same road.

 

I disagree.

 

Adjust toe in a little as was mentioned by Mr. Coleman. Toe out will wear the inside of the front tires out before there time. And as it has been described, "darty" driving habits.