Steering Damper

[varleym]

Contrary to my original thoughts, when I've come to re-fit my steering damper it seems it's knackered - quite a bit of free play.

Now I know that some people advocate running without a damper, but I would be grateful for fellow club members views on the topic. Also, would you recommend fitting any other than an OE unit?

Cheers

Mark

[davew]

If you change over to a Disco setup you'll need to change the damper anyway, either running one behind the axle or rigging up a bracket on the front.

I run without a damper because, in general, all they do is mask a problem and it's sometimes better to fix the problem rather than mask it. I'd suggest you try it without first and see how it goes. If you have the pre-load setup and all your bushes and track rod ends are 100% then you shouldn't need one. If you run without one and it works fine then one day in the future you have a problem you know something is amiss. With a damper on things have to have got pretty bad before you'll notice.

Having said all that, on Pam's I fitted a Britpart one behind the axle because no matter what I tried I couldn't track down a problem it had when it hit a pothole and adding a damper completely cured it.