Talk:Hydrosteer

This article needs some serious improvement. If one is going to write a page then at least it needs some more facts. Quoting an opinion from Car magazine of 1968 is directly akin to quoting a 2012 Jeremy Clarkson. It makes for fun reading - but may have little connecting it with fact. I don't have time just yet to edit out all the mistakes and replace them with something worthwhile. Fundamentally Rover insisted that for the P5, Hydrosteer changed the number of turns between lock, increasing it significantly, over that proposed by Hydrosteer. They then achieved the feel-less steering they wanted. BMC on the C series saloons kept with the Hydrosteer recommendations but similarly changed the system to their own ideas for the 4 LR. They immediately changed once they saw the Road test reports for the 4 LR and various modifications were conducted early on in production. However sales bombed to just over 6,000 cars in 4 years with about 4,000 of those being produced in the first 12 months so changes introduced even 6 months in, saw little production.

As to that nonsense about the variable rate catching drivers out with oversteer - urban myth. The change in rate is not significant and is directly akin to that achieved on the normal cam and peg boxes this system was replacing.

Steepwiki (talk) 08:22, 27 February 2013 (UTC) Thanks for your opinion, which I note is unsigned. In originating this article I used what few references to Hydrosteer I could find and cited these in good faith. I had hoped that those with superior knowledge to mine would take the time to improve the article and fortunately some have now done so. The comment (now removed) on difficult-to-control oversteer is one I have experienced myself in a Rover P6 3500S on a metalled surface. Admittedly that car had the rival Marles Varamatic system but I currently own both a Rover P5B with Hydrosteer and a Jaguar 420 with Varamatic and I would not like to get either of them into a tail skid because of their unpredictable response. I think this is likely to be due not only to over-lightness but also the variable ratio. I am a Chartered Mechanical Engineer so I am not inclined to invent myths but since it is clearly a moot point it is right that it has been removed from the article.