E34 530 540 power steering heavy

[genphreak]

Hope it works. Esp. in the summer!

There is also stuff called Carbon grease, or that calcium stuff in the link I posted last year...

[shogun]

In case the Vaseline works well for you, I will also try that on my E32 750 steering wheel, the slip ring is screeching when temperatures are cold, disappears when cabin is heated to normal temperature. Vaseline I always have in the garage as multi purpose weapon, use it also for example
for the o-rings of fuel injectors
as an acceptable alternative to automatic transmission assembly gel
holding check balls in tranmission valve body
holding the steel balls in the steering gear when assembling

[632 Regal]

SO far it still works well. Still I think it's a bit thick but better than lithium. Has to be something slipperier that can do both the heat and cold. Seems it makes turning the wheel heavy in the cold, I cleaned it back up and just used a tiny dab and still a little thick feeling on turns when under 30 degrees F. If I turn it fast the lock pin will disengage and I have to carefully work it back into position before it breaks my airbag trigger wire. Sometimes tough while on twisty mountain roads.

[632 Regal]

SO far it still works well. Still I think it's a bit thick but better than lithium. Has to be something slipperier that can do both the heat and cold. Seems it makes turning the wheel heavy in the cold, I cleaned it back up and just used a tiny dab and still a little thick feeling on turns when under 30 degrees F. If I turn it fast the lock pin will disengage and I have to carefully work it back into position before it breaks my airbag trigger wire. Sometimes tough while on twisty mountain roads.

Revisited 2018...

Same shyt same problem. 20 degrees F and cant drive without busting under steering stuff. Forget the logics, forget the grease, forget it all. Tomorrow I am going to do it again and remove the steering wheel and clean the grease and **** and going straight to graphite powder. If that don't work I don't care cause nothing else works. Never had a problem with other BMWs just this one that started with dried out grease. Let's go to graphite powder that don't care the temperature. This is a lot of work to do over and over again for nothing. Hopefully I can find all the parts and glue them together so I can make this work together.


Doing this time and time again sucks.

[632 Regal]

Waiting for some better temps to pull the wheel. Need to run a 1500 watt portable electric heater under the steering column for 30 minutes so things work nice.

I'm thinking that once upon a time someone complained about the squeaking noise and the repair was to grease it up. The grease dried up over years causing my problem.

I can not see BMW applying grease in this thing, don't make sense especially in regards to low temperatures. SO back to the idea of graphite dust, rub it on and hopefully this issue will never rear it's ugly head again. It also is a lubricant so should do the job.

Edit: WRONG! this ring does nothing but space 2 plastic deals apart, no electrical contacts at all.
(Anything you use on this ring has to at least allow conductivity for the air bag. No errors using lithium or petroleum jelly, not sure how that works but it did with the small contact area.)

[632 Regal]

The deal... The outer plastic thing is shrinking against the brass ring holding it too tight. Even graphite doesn't work. Ended up sanding the outer plastic thing that holds the spinny tape deal that connects the horn. (in hindsight I failed to check if the horn still works)

I should have sanded the plastic more but it's 20 degrees and my fingers stopped working. Was also worried about dropping the tape deal which would have caused me to throw the whole thing across the road and I really didn't want to deal with the repercussions of a move like that. Stay calm, shoot once.

Now it has a little clearance to the brass ring, still snug but I can turn it now, did also put some graphite on it which didn't seem to make any difference. The brass ring doesn't want to fit inside of the plastic deal, something about expansion between two dissimilar substances that make no sense being together. Someone got paid to come up with this idea.

I got it all apart and back together in about 40 minutes because beer and cigarettes took a priority. I'll just post some pictures, figure it out, I had to... lol