Here is a good rabbit hole to go down for electric power steering ,
Toyota Electric Power Steering (EPS) Conversion - The Ranger Station
LI-Rick......No not a problem. I don't even have a car ! The history goes like this. My Speedster was hard steering. This, of course, is entirely subjective based on the drivers "feel". Having had a few cars in my life I think I know what "hard steering" feels like. Having measured steering wheel effort actually is on quite a few different cars, about 4lbs seems to be the average and perhaps the ideal. My Speedster measured nearly15lbs , static, in a parking lot. This was not acceptable. I installed two new/rebuilt stock boxes with the same result and this is after checking and adjusting them per specs. It was not hard to turn the steering wheel with the tie rods disconnected so that eliminated any binding ideas. I even tightened the box up more and no change was noted. Next was the steering goemetry and alignment. All was adjusted to speck including a caster change slightly to ease it a little. Next was the tires. Inflation changes the steering effort significantly. Over inflated tires is not acceptable either. I tried different tires on the front just to see if that changed anything. It didn't. Since then I have driven a few other Speedsters and felt that all of them steered hard based on my measurements.
Another thing was the bump-steer. Up on the Angeles Crest Hwy near me is a great road to play on. Lots of curves and dips etc. Bump-steer can be scary and it's not very predictable. So for what ever this is worth, I wasn't very happy with the steering on my Speedster. A lot of drivers are perfectly happy with the way their car steers, I'm not because these two discrepancies still, I'm afraid, exist.
So, since I have a lot of time on my hands, I am trying to eliminate them ahead of delivery time. Or at least try to. Perhaps I should have explained my issues with steering in my first entry on this subject. I think my Speedster steered like a Beast ! Maybe since I'm 82 I'm just turning into a weak old man and can't tolerate a hard steering beast any more. But at the least, I can try.............Bruce
I have driven many Beetles and Karman Ghia's and never once did I think they were hard steering. That is where my confusion lies. There is so little weight over the front tires, unlike front engine cars. Did you have an exceptionally small steering wheel in your speedster?
Chuck and I got busy on another project and never got back tot he rack and pinion talk, but I'll be down to his house in 2 weeks and will try and remember, plus the car will be there so Ic an take some pics and see what he did first hand also.
The reason Chuck did his was not steering effort as Bruce was experiencing, Chuck was just tired of low quality steering boxes and after replacing new TRW boxes a few times he said "F" it I'm building a rack.
I think the deal here is just this, from Hines & Co.:
"low quality steering boxes"
The ball and worm thing just does not get it unless new and adjusted just so. I had issues with same on earlier 356 coupes, an A and a B, and those were ZF. R&P is simply a better engineering solution. And I don't think its a steering effort issue, or bump steer, which is a function of the front end geometry, as I understand it, vs. just the steering gear itself. There is a reason there is a damper hooked in to that system. Its about road feel, and lock-to-lock, quickness and dead space, or lash. R&P solves many of those problems, if done right. All that said, I'd love to have a R&P system on my car along with a Mendeola (??) suspension system, wishbones, coil-overs and etc. But I don't. And it's not clear that I even could. So it's std VW stuff all the way for me, with ball joints and a sway bar. Truth be told: it seems to work pretty good. It ain't perfect, and as mentioned, it could be much better, but I can hoon with the best of them. I do get caught up in the slow turning ratio now and then ( too much lock-to-lock ) on quick mountain switch-backs, but one learns to live with it.
I've always read it as if it were Lil Rick, ooops. I suppose he isn't so Lil.
Rick.....No...I had a 15" wheel. I couldn't resist posting this again but you'd definitely need power steering with this arrangement !
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