Cheap electric power steering?

They made a kazillion Saturn Vues with electric power steering columns and they basically never fail so the junkyards here have them with the power unit attached for $75-200.

There's this doodad: http://www.ebay.com/itm/171027023129?item=171027023129&viewitem=&vxp=mtr which is supposed to fake the CAN signals to the controller.

All well and good, but damned if it doesn't look like it's the same box as this one: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Corsa-B-C-Kit-Electric-power-steering-controller-box-With-ECU-plug-EPAS-/170917297179 which is a hell of a lot cheaper...

GTI needs a replacement column, so I figure why not upgrade at the same time? Was figuring on going with one of these columns and a quickener, instead of hunting down a Cabriolet power rack and dealing with the nightmare that is VW power steering pumps/lines.

Am I stupid or is it really going to be this easy?

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Pete Remner
Cleveland, Ohio

1984 RX-7 (rallycross thing)
1978
Silence is golden, but duct tape is silver.

MR2?

Working on VW with a manual rack = okay
Working on VW with power steering = hate for all things German.

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Pete
Am I stupid or is it really going to be this easy?

You, me, and lotsa other folks are asking the same thing.

I'm seriously considering this, since I've already got a nice non-power r&p.

I know the fab work scares a lot of folks off, but most of the really critical parts don't seem like they'd be any different than adding a quickener.

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KF7RWG
http://www.utahrallygroup.com

I bought a GM power electric power steering setup a few years ago (Delphi unit I think) with the same idea. Couldn't figure out how to hook up the controller--I wonder if the doodad would work.

Pretty easy in concept, the size was right.

In the end I gave up and just put a Honda PS pump and rack and called it a day.

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Robert Culbertson
Working on VW with a manual rack = okay
Working on VW with power steering = hate for all things German.

This needs to be on a t-shirt.

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Kirk Coughlin
Woodbury, MN and River Falls, WI

Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est.

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krisdahl
I bought a GM power electric power steering setup a few years ago (Delphi unit I think) with the same idea. Couldn't figure out how to hook up the controller--I wonder if the doodad would work.

Pretty easy in concept, the size was right.

In the end I gave up and just put a Honda PS pump and rack and called it a day.

The controller is part of the column, so you unbolt it from the car/truck and you have everything.

It has a big fat 80a fused high current lead (motor is rated for 65a short-term, the controller will go into motor-save mode if it gets used heavily), an ignition-on feed, a ground, a couple wires to the motor itself, and two wires that get Class 2 serial bus data.

The only gotcha that might happen here is the VUE's system is supposed to have all calibrations loaded in the PSCM and it knows which one to use by reading the VIN from the BCM, and we ain't gonna have a BCM connected to it, just some data-faker box. Hmm.

I'm hoping that the thing will be tough enough to deal with a VW manual rack with a 2:1 quickener on top. I figure it should be, a VUE is a pretty porky trucklet and just about impossible to turn the steering if you have the ignition off, whereas a Rabbit with a quickener is merely terrible.

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Pete Remner
Cleveland, Ohio

1984 RX-7 (rallycross thing)
1978
Silence is golden, but duct tape is silver.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/23/2013 12:35PM by Pete.

Try it on a few rally-'s or autocrosses first Pete. The steering loads in racing, 'specially rally, are gonna be a lot higher than in road driving the kiddies to school and to the grocery store. The heat input, and dissipation from, the electronic control elements (or contacts) is gonna be a lot higher. Maybe take the covers off and put a fan on the motor and the controller.

And heavy gage wire into the unit is going to be needed for the same reason, plus managing the sudden voltage drops due to surge currents. IMO, it would be wise to source power direct from the battery; taking this level of current through the harness sounds like a great way to subject many parts of the electrical system to sudden voltage drops; not too good for the ECU..... And it will wreck a standard ignition switch contact; using a relay to switch on this level of current is a must. I would suggest studying the Vue's schematics and look at how they wired it in.

The 80a circuit does come directly from the battery. The igniton +ve circuit is a low-current circuit and not a problem.

Whole car needs rewired anyway so I'm not concerned about that. Not sure what I'm going to do with the car (other than having silly-high compression and a 300 degree cam and four huge throttles on it like a good engine should) but I figured it would be a good testbed for the system. We do a bunch of street rods and kit cars and stuff here at work and some of them want us to figure out how to do power steering but don't want to spend $1200 for a fancy chromed Ididit column.

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Pete Remner
Cleveland, Ohio

1984 RX-7 (rallycross thing)
1978
Silence is golden, but duct tape is silver.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/23/2013 04:44PM by Pete.

They may not fail, but they do get noisy. It's essentially the same thing as what the colbalt has but never had the motor recall and people tend not to care about the noise. Having said that, I've never seen a column fail unless it was the integrated wiring/sensors. The equinox with the ecotech(not the hon-duh v6 or the later gm v6) came with the same electronic steering. It will default to a set assist rate without comm to the bcm but won't be fully functional( I.e. no speed sensitive assist). Can't remember at the moment because its been a while since someone with a vue complained about their power steering, but I do believe they use the 2 flats with a cutout for the bolt as opposed to the colbalt with the standard splined end. An adapter might be bit harder to find/fab, that's all.

I've seen people overheat the motors at autocross but not at rallycross so maybe there is hope for the dirt.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/23/2013 11:19PM by themadcheshire.

Interesting on the autocross vs rally-x overheating. I can see where the actual torque (and thus motor amperage) would be higher on pavement than dirt. My concern would for for typical rally stages, and espscially long ones; I'll bet that the actual steering power load over time will range from 10 to 30 times higher than on the street, just due to the constant steering input, and the time duratoin is potentially 10's of minutes of this loading, not a minute or so for an autocross track. BTW, early Ford Focus power steering had problems that one never saw on the street; was not due to overheating but over-rpming the PS pump. So you never know 'til you try in the different load environment.

The 17mm double-D is pretty standard since GM used them on damn near everything and the aftermarket has picked up the slack. I believe it's known as the "Corvette" shaft.

I also have a small stack of the W-body steering shafts that clunk, so I'm covered there as well.

It's funny you say autocross vs. rallycross... the only car I ever had problems with was my Quantum. It autocrossed just fine, but on rallycross I can go two, maybe three corners before the fluid overheats or cavitates or something and the assist just disappears. Solution - drive it so you don't use the steering much.

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Pete Remner
Cleveland, Ohio

1984 RX-7 (rallycross thing)
1978
Silence is golden, but duct tape is silver.

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Pete
The 17mm double-D is pretty standard since GM used them on damn near everything and the aftermarket has picked up the slack. I believe it's known as the "Corvette" shaft.

I also have a small stack of the W-body steering shafts that clunk, so I'm covered there as well.

It's funny you say autocross vs. rallycross... the only car I ever had problems with was my Quantum. It autocrossed just fine, but on rallycross I can go two, maybe three corners before the fluid overheats or cavitates or something and the assist just disappears. Solution - drive it so you don't use the steering much.

17MM double-d, eh? Never heard them called that, but then again I've never had to worry about what it was called. It would figure it came on the Corvette first. Most of the steering and suspension and electronic innovations show up on the vette's first.

We occasionally will get colbats in(typically ss's) that have the power steering light on because they overheated their motor at autocross. They swear up and down it just came on, but you look at the car and it has super sticky tires, scca stickers all over and soon becomes apparent. Reset the light and off you go.

W-body clunking I-shafts? Never... I don't believe it! Hahaha. Even the new ones do it. They seem to have figured out how to make a proper C/K-truck shaft but all of the cars eventually make noise.
Seems like you'd be able to make an adapter should the Vue column have a splined end then.
We had a driver in Prepard driving his Focus that constantly would kill pumps and hoses during rallycross. Needless to say, it wasn't a rallycross without his power steering dumping fluid.

The RX-7 already has a chopped and spliced steering shaft because the subframe came from one car and the column came from another and the steering shaft was about ten inches too short. So I'm not really concerned about it, and steering hackery is something you have to do if you put a quickener in the system anyway.

I had been collecting the GM shafts since at one point I was planning on putting a STS rack in the Golf I had years back. Same travel but 2.2 turns lock to lock instead of four. (Final-generation Grand Ams were 2.6 and are easier to find)

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Pete Remner
Cleveland, Ohio

1984 RX-7 (rallycross thing)
1978
Silence is golden, but duct tape is silver.

What years Saturn Vue had this in it?

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Grant Hughes