I\'m thinking of removing the power steering from my fd and was wondering if anyone here had done it. Is it a straightforward job?
Reason for the removal is mainly that the aux drive belt died recently and I had to drive the 150 miles home without power-steering. The lack of ps was hardly noticeable at 50+mph but was hard work at low speed because I was working against the pump. So, I\'m thinking it should be fine to drive without.
Any obvious reasons why I shouldn\'t?
Cheers,
Mike
You could always fit an electric power steering pump, if you want to remove the PS you would need to fit a manual rack.
You can convert the standered power steering rack to manual handy enough, but it\'s a one way change. Need to cut bits out and weld up the quill. I ran the drifter manual for a wile so if that\'s doable, driving certainly is with it. Full manual conversion is alot better than pushing fluid through the pump etc
You\'ll struggle more with anything much wider than the 8" stock wheels on the front. You could reduce the caster to say 5 deg on the front but less than that and the car will start to feel less stable at speed.
I have an Atomic manual rack on my FD.
how do you feel the atomic rex, does it feel alot harder to turn than running p/s or somewhere between having p/s and blowing the belt off(pushing against the pump)
If you go non power steering please use an FC EGI rack which is a bolt in mod as it is dangerious to use the power rack without power and the racks have been to break on the FD when used in this manner :(
Hope this helps
Quote from: turbotoaster;778227how do you feel the atomic rex, does it feel alot harder to turn than running p/s or somewhere between having p/s and blowing the belt off(pushing against the pump)
Having had a pump fail on a car while driving I would definitely say it is closer to having P/S working than having to work against the fluid in the rack.
When I reduced the caster down to about 3.5 deg it actually felt too light in mid to high speed cornering. So I went back to 6.5 deg to get the straight line stability and corner weight.
If you used your car everyday and had to parallel park regularly I believe it would get a bit tedious having to use both hands to turn the wheel.
Having say 9" wide front wheels with sticky tyres i.e R888 then you get a fair thump back through the wheel from bumps etc.
With the Mazda 16" wheels and road tyres I hardly notice it but I drive with a light touch on the wheel most of the time.
ill be running 18x10 with 285 tyres on the front so i was wondering how different it is, ive run hot hatches with no p/s and loved the feel, but they were only 195/45/15s
Guess ill have to pull the weights out of the garage and get in shape.
thanks for the hint about caster though, ill have to mention it when i get it all aligned
if you want to get rid of the pump you can. Easy. For the steering rack, you can get the manual conversion from atomic rex I think. Cheap mans way is to just loop the steering rack line back into the next one. Been done many times and people are fine with it.
yep, howard coleman does the same thing on his car, running it like that for 5yrs+ now i think.