I agree - it's a matter of car sympathy. I like to think that those of us who try to be sympathetic to our cars' mechanics are rewarded by the longer life and reliability of the components.

Like you guys I move 1st steer 2nd. Can't afford the tyre wear and tear they are too expensive! A friend of mine used to work for a tyre company and they loved PS as all the idiots who turned the wheel whilst stationary were just wearing the front tyres out at a rate of knots.

The whole point of power steering is that lets you park easy because you don't have to be moving to turn the wheel. My car is nearly 12 years old with over 100k on it. I turn the wheel when stationary and have had zero problems with the steering, or anything else.

Any car that can't be power steered while stationary wants scrapping.

answers on a postcard as to why the above word has letters blanked out, didn't know it was offensive to say scrap.

It was in case you were trying to inject a swear word - fixed now - WKS

Edited by WellKnownSid on 15/04/2010 at 14:54

Power steering makes it easier to turn the wheel - and consequently easier to cause excessive wear and damage - when the car is stationary.

What excessive wear and damage?

A cars weight and tyres hardly alter from the factory spec, so it's really rather easy for the manufacturer to specify the steering components to be strong enough to cope with a bit of parking action. Sure some muppet will put widER tyres on a car, but they are not that much wider than the norm.

It not like people put hundreds or thousands of KGs of ballast on a car and then putting wheels that are 2 or 3 times the width of the standard tyres and THEN filling them with water, now that is hard on steering, parking occasionally is not.