Finally something to update! Back in February I dropped the car off with a reputable local guy to have a roll bar put in. It still needs a few little additions, plus paint, but I think it turned out fantastic.
First things first though - electric power steering
This is out of a first generation Saturn Vue. I pulled this out of a junk yard for under $75 for everything. It's a self-contained system that, when combined with an eBay controller, makes for a very cheap way to convert basically anything to electric power steering.
Here's the rough plan so far. The upper portion of the Vue housing will get cut out and act as a sleeve around the lower Vue housing (the one that bolts up to the EPS). That will allow the upper Corolla housing to fit snugly and weld up to the Vue lower. This is good for a few reasons, namely that the Corolla support bearing is 3/4" (or so I thought) so it will fit any universal 3/4" shaft (turns out that's not precisely right), as well as allowing me to retain the ignition, turn signals, and wiper controls.
Here's the section I'm taking out of the Vue housing to make a sleeve. The tapered upper portion also got removed.
The lower mount was very simple to make, just two 90*- ish bends in some flat 1/8" steel and a few drilled holes lets it mount up.
After turning the bracket 180* from where it was in the previous picture, and with a little bit of finessing, the front mounts bolt right up to the factory location.
Next up is the intermediate shaft between the EPS output and the rack u-joint. To create this, I used the Saturn upper intermediate u-joint, the lower spline from the Corolla column, and part of the Saturn's upper column to piece it together.
And there we go. We now have a mechanical connection to the car!
While I was messing about under the dash, I went ahead and modified (read: destroyed) the factory rear wiper switch to use as a mounting point for the EPS assist adjustment knob.
The next step was to take everything apart again and weld up the input shaft. There were some weird constraints involving shaft diameters for the support bearing to consider, and this was the best way to do this as far as I could determine.
To make sure it was straight, the two pieces were clamped in some 90* steel when tacked.
After welding all the way around, it was then ground flat for sleeving.
The lower part of the Corolla column was cut and used as the sleeve to reinforce the new setup.
If this thing is going to break it's not going to be here, that's for sure.
And here's the whole thing reassembled, ready to go back in the car.
Since the stock steering wheel has a deep dish to it, and the Momo going in this car is flat, I needed some extra shaft length (phrasing) to get the wheel closer to me.
To do this, the end of the stock shaft was chopped and welded to some 3/4 steering shaft from Speedway Motors.
To sleeve this part, I used the splined lower Saturn shaft, drilled out to 3/4".
After some grinding......
...and more welding...
We have a steering column ready for a wheel.
Obviously this needs some cleaning up, but everything is together and very strong. The wheels turn lock to lock with no binding in the joints or bearings anywhere, and the steering wheel is in a fantastic position.
All that remains is some electrical work to improve the less-than-stellar battery wiring from the previous owner, and then this will be ready for proper testing!
Comment