Electronic power steering?

[importsdontlikeme]

Has anyone ever tried converting to electronic power steering on an S-Car?

Or if it hasn't been done does anyone know if it's reasonably possible?


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[S.Bretz]

I have rolled around the idea but never measured anything up. I know there are basic kits to convert old muscle cars to EPS...I'm sure you could do it to an s-turd as well.

[19bonestock88]

I imagine you would begin by sourcing a column and associated parts from an Ion... I don’t know if the steering control module could be ran by itself or it would need the Ion BCM to tell it to work?

[alexofnazareth]

The EPS racks typically have their own ECU. I don't think the ion/Vue racks would have BCM inputs.

[jlheidtke]

I'm not sure about "electronic" power steering. But if you just want an electric power steering pump, the rx-7 crowd tends to favor the electric pump from a Toyota MR2. Here is a link for the pump.
https://www.summitracing.com/parts/r...iABEgJz9_D_BwE

[Jon2001sc2]

The ion/vue/equanox units require a canbus signal for I believe speed and a few other things to vary how much assist to give. That said there is a controller that was made and sold on ebay that allows you to select how much assist you want to have when using one of those units. Also I have seen the electric power steering from quads used on pikes peak prototypes as they didn't need a great deal of assist and the lighter weight was perfect.
I'm afraid my research on adapting the ion units is all about 5 years old now so I'm not as up to speed on what signals exactly that need to be given to it. In working on my LSJ swap I was using all the ion components in the s-series but then I also had the ion front subframe so keeping the electronic assist was my only option for a practical assist. I am still considering using one of the controller kits to allow me to select how much assist to use rather than the factory programmed curve.
The controller for the vue/equanox unit can be found on ebay here

[ProDarwin]

Came here to post that^

Lots of guys in the autox/car building world use the VUE column with the little control box.

[ZombieSatty]

Very interesting.

[importsdontlikeme]

Wow a lot more response then I expected. I'm definitely going to look into this


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[19bonestock88]

I had no idea they had a controller for it... I’ve been wanting to turn mine off/delete it without the recurring error message every time I cycle the key, wonder if that would work?

[Jon2001sc2]

Has to be the metal cased controller on the power steering unit, the plastic one on some ions is not compatible. Also if you are running a controller outside of the car’s can bus system it will give an fault code. It might be possible to remove it with something like HPTuners but I’m not sure if you can program it out with that.

[19bonestock88]

Since the 03-06 Ion 2.2 doesn’t have HPT support I’m kinda stuck trying to trick the control module into thinking the motor is connected I guess?