Two things came together. As these things often begin, it started with a minor power steering pump leak which was decorating the entire drivers side under the hood with a lightly fogged layer of what-the-heck-is-that. And the good luck side was running across the Mopar Action article. I may be late to the party, but this was new to me... The valve mod in the article adds a couple shims to the valve, which reduces the output pressure, in effect tightening up the feel at the steering wheel. Who knew!
Finding the right washers to use as shims is a bit tricky, but what I found and used worked really well. I'm not sure of the effect on fluid temp, but my thought (blind hope?) is that lower pressure would equate to a lower temp. Anyway, if this is old news to the gang here, OK, I'm just confirming this did exactly what I wanted. I got a late Saginaw reman pump from O'Reilly's for $47 bucks, got the washers and I now have a noticeably firmer feel on a Tuff Wheel. The Challenger is smoother in curves and better behaved through my favorite curved road that I use for my 20 mile check-out runs. This is a cheap quick mod with a nice result.
The article:
http://www.moparaction.com/Tech/beep/PUMP_IT_DOWN-re-v1.4.pdf Where they show a pic of the valve and the two shims, those are the shims they added to the valve.
The shim washer: I tried cutting down a brass washer, but had no luck getting it in proper shape, too soft to work with for the dimensions. Here is the washer I used for the shim - AMPG part number B004K1FG1S. I got mine off EBay (bag of 100 for about $15). I used two of them. The article says you can stack more or less to get the degree of firmness feel you want. I'm pleased with two shims. Sorry, but I didn't think to take pics, see the article for theirs. Firm really is better.
