How to Add Power Steering to Your Classic Car

Adding power steering is a very popular modification for older vehicles, most notably old trucks or muscle cars. These vehicles usually have large V8 engines that put a lot of weight over the front wheels, and the trucks often have large, heavy off-road tires that further exacerbate the problem. Power steering reduces the amount of effort required to turn the wheel, especially at low speeds, so it makes these cars a lot more drivable. Since they were often available from the factory with or without power steering, it’s relatively easy to add it to a vehicle that didn’t have it before.

By virtue of many older American cars sharing a lot of componentry under the skin, we’re pleased to offer a power steering conversion kit for nearly anything that came out of Detroit in the 1960’s, as well as some newer and older stuff too. This would replace either manual steering, worn out factory power steering, or the hybrid of power assist steering that uses a ram cylinder and control valve actuating a sealed manual gearbox. For some applications we offer a rack and pinion conversion as well to replace a worm-and-sector or recirculating-ball steering gearbox. These applications typically use a steering rack from a Ford Mustang II, which is fairly ubiquitous in the world of hot-rodding. Rack and pinion steering offers more direct steering feel, since the tie rods are much shorter, and it also relocates the steering gear to make room for an engine swap.