JayJay

How would i know if a car had active steering or not. Is there a marking somewhere or some tell tale sign?

I have a loaner which has very light steering compared to my car which ive had complaints about concerning how heavy the wheel is to turn. I asked the dealer if it was equipped with Active steering and the Service advisor said 'i dont think so...no' but id like to make 100% sure.


Anyone any advice?

cobradav

WHen u turn key to position 2 and all the dash lights up including all the safety ICONS, look for the top row on left of these symbols and you should see a steering wheel symbol with an ! next to it on right side. Something like this ^! That will be there if the car is equipped with AS. IF not, the symbol will not be there.

JayJay

Thanks very much

Stranger

I find the active steering very obvious. I have that in my E60. Whenever I hop into another car without, I always find myself not turning the wheel enough such that I either see myself heading towards a pillar when getting out of a underground car park lot or nearly crossing to the other side of the road while negotiating a turn out of say a building.

Ray Hull

Active Steering is very apparent the moment you turn sharply in a parking lot or other tight space. Indeed, it is rather surprising, and when taking tight corners in traffic (if to the right of the driving lane), I have always been careful for fear of clipping a right rear wheel on the curbing. In sum you are missing (or the wheel travel is shortened by) one whole revolution (to 10:1 from 18:1).

As for the steering feeling light vs heavy, the most usual culprit there is tires. High perfromance (read: sticky) tires require much more input from the steering wheel, when compared to less grippy tires. The most apparent switch is going from high performance to winter snow tires. In comparison, turning the snowtires feels like the front end is resting on ice.

Cheers,
Ray Hull

tab545

Under the hood, there's a big metal box with about a dozen metal tubes snaking out of it, and it is labeled as active steering. Like near the car's right front wheel, I think.

JayJay

Ray:

Same setup on the car tyre wise. Goodyear Runflats that come as standard on UK spec M sports packs.

I saw a (...) marker on the dash that lit up. The thing is that at higher speed the wheel (this may be in my imagination) feels a bit heavier but at low speed its not 'oh good god im out of control and this is totally new' lightweight.
It feels much like my mums volvo in terms of heavyness (she has an s60 2.0t with 18" alloys on it).

The BM has also struck me as particularly heavy to move about. Ill take a look under the hood of the loaner and have a peek.


They have made some improvements in the 2005 bm too. The cubby hole under the light knob thing is now covered with a little latch.

The big red reindeer nose attached the bottom of the rear view mirror is now far far far smaller (about 1/4 of the height). Theres also an SOS button on the roof bit next to the bluetooth mic. Apart from that i dont see any other major differences between my september 04 and this september 05 model.

znod

There might be some info for your here. Join the club if you can't feel AS.

JayJay

If my car has active steering ill eat my hat.

It takes physical effort to move the wheel when its not moving.

Rudy

I don't think the amount of physical effort has much to do with having AS or not...it's all about how much you have to turn the wheel (not how hard)...

Did you see this thread yet?
http://forums.e60.net/index.php?showtopic=19633