any ideas on a polo problem??? heavy steering

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I know its not Corrado related but thought someone may have come across it in their younger dub initiations - Ive Just purchased a '98 1.0L Mk4 for my son to learn to drive in. (I was keen to get him into a VW from day 1) its Very clean and original with no mods and a full history with only 72k on the clock. The only problem is it doesn't have power steering and hes finding it a little difficult to say the least, I can remember driving my old GTI's without PAS and cant remember it being this stiff. I Jacked up the front wheels and they dont feel too bad to turn when off the floor so I dont think theres anything majorly wrong with the column, although the steering wheel does have a little odd movement in it, infact if you try to turn the wheel while stationary it almost feels youre going to break it, it has a tiny bit of play in the rack but nothing major, CV's, track rod ends etc all feel and sound OK. Does anyone have any suggestions, top mounts, column UJ etc, is there any common faults I need to check for?? I know its never going to be as light as a feather, but my son struggles and I cant even imagine how a young female driver would ever being able to steer it as it is. Thanks.

[davidwort 0]

what size tyres and pressure does it have, does it run straight without pulling to one side? - geometry could affect the steering resistance I guess

not got a small non standard steering wheel?

a non pas polo should have pretty small wheels/tyres and be fairly easy to turn from lock to lock when stationary

top mounts could be an issue, but you'll usually get quite pronounced knocking from the suspension telling something's wrong there, if you jack the car up you should be able to feel the play in the top mounts.

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The car runs true and when moving is fine, infact it drives quite nice for an old small car, no knocking at all and no play in the top mounts that I can feel. The car is on 165/65/13's and I've increased pressures on front from 30psi to about 35psi which has improved it slightly, I had thought about dropping down to 155/70/13's to see if that made a difference.

[davidwort 0]

I had a mk2 1.3 on skinny 155's or something once, that was still very heavy to manoeuvre, these cars were built with geometry to make them stable when driving but unfortunately that makes for heavy manual steering.

all new bushings, mountings, ball joint etc might help and if you can do the job yourself it's pretty easy and cheap to do, but you won't make them as easy as a modern PAS car to park etc.