How to put modern power steering in an old car

In reply to VolvoHeretic :

Watch the video I posted, by SuperFastMatt. He goes into detail about how they work. Pretty simple.

If you mount a Prius  electric steering and do not hook it up to 12V  can you tell that is hooked up ?

Some cars are just hard to park , or drive slow , but over 20mph or so they steer OK , 

Just wondering if you could hook up an on/off switch to use it only when needed ?

californiamilleghia said:

If you mount a Prius  electric steering and do not hook it up to 12V  can you tell that is hooked up ?

Some cars are just hard to park , or drive slow , but over 20mph or so they steer OK , 

Just wondering if you could hook up an on/off switch to use it only when needed ?

That is already basically how they work.  It's a negative feedback thing, less input force means less assist added.  But if you want to go further, then yes, when the controller is not getting power then you just have manual steering.

I wonder how hard it would be to hardware-hack the load sensors in the column to reduce the amount of assist if desired.

Kia/Hyundai have seen fit to flood the market with column EPAS cars, I wonder how THEIR controllers work.  Their columns appear to be far more swappable.

IIRC it's a CAN signal into the Prius ones, so it should be possible to make it speed-sensitive. I have (had?) one to play with but I haven't done anything with it yet.

VolvoHeretic said:

In reply to Ian F (Forum Supporter) :

I don't know how electric assist works but if your wiring shorts out, does it drive you into the ditch?

It just turns into manual steering. There is a knob on the console to adjust the assist amount. It's unlabeled, of course (the PO didn't label anything...) so I inadvertently turned the knob to the left and quickly found out that was the P/S assist. As part of the conversion, the PO installed a quick ratio TR7 rack, so the steering just gets really heavy w/o the electric assist.

I would much rather add EPS to the Volvo than install a 16:1 164 box.  There is a lot of discussion about steering effort on the 1800list over the years. Some consider it a feature of the car to be lived with. Apparently, refurbishing the idler arm bushing can decrease the effort (after 50 years, most are REALLY tight). I have a bronze bushing replacement kit, but I still plan to go with a EPS system.  My eventual plan is to drive my ES on the Dragon and having now driven that road (in my R53), doing so in an 1800ES w/o power steering sounds like torture.

Unfortunately, no... no solid plans on when I'll start work on the ES.  On the plus side, I'm currently back in NH, so generally making more $$$ than I'm spending... so the fund for the new shop is increasing... assuming I can find a contractor.