[paulgato]

Thanks for the suggestion oil pan 4,

...but the Vauxhall Astra 1.7D Estate (with no turbo, no power steering and no air conditioning) is long gone and no longer my problem. When it developed more rust than I could deal with I gave it to a friend who had it for three or four years and then sold it to someone else locally. She says she still sees it around. It's 23 years old and still going. It was also a very easy engine to work on, with all that space around it in the engine bay. There's merit in simplicity. I got 62mpg (IMP) on long trips and about 55mpg overall. The car I had before that one was the same car (well that was the car-derived van version, but built on the same body shell - just with no seats and windows in the back, but a good comparison) and had the same engine but the turbo version (1.7TD). The fuel economy of that one was about the same as the non-turbo one. Possibly a bit worse overall, but that could have been because it was faster.

For my current car (Golf Mk4 diesel estate) VW quote both my version (100bhp TDi) and the 68bhp non-turbo SDi as having the same fuel efficiency of 5.2l/100km combined, with the 100bhp TDi being very slightly better in the urban cycle but slightly worse on the highway. The other, more powerful TDi versions are all slightly worse on fuel, according to VW.

But the point I was making in this thread was that power steering does not always make a car nicer or easier to drive. It's quite possible to have a heavy diesel engine in the front and still steer it comfortably without p/s. The 1.7TD had power steering and was much harder work to drive than the 1.7D without p/s, except when parking. Large movements of the steering wheel were easier with the p/s but those slight unconscious adjustments that you make when going along a 'straight' road were not - it wouldn't respond easily to tiny pressures on the wheel - and it was a tiring car to drive on motorways, although fine around town.