I have been driving my 3/4 ton suburban around with no power steering for the last few days trying to get a feeling for it.
Its no fun especially in parking lots.
To get some help I am initially going to try to install a hydraulic power unit. These are about as cheap as trying to put a clutch on the Saginaw that may not even work.
They appear to weigh less than a cast iron pump and clutch.
They are also the same price or cheaper and easier to get than the OEM take off electric power steering pumps people like to repurpose for applications like this (old MR2 pumps).
Best part about the HPU compared to an automotive OEM take off, there are no proprietary hydraulic fittings. The HPUs will always use NPT or common straight threaded hydraulic fittings.
First go will be with a hydraulic power unit. They move about 1.3 to 1.5 GPM up to 2500psi. That is about half the flow of a Saginaw pump at idle.
Will it work? I don't know. I think its time to find out.
The HPU motor and pump are physically bigger than the electric power steering pumps pulled from Japanese cars. So if size matters then it should work to some degree.
Since I already know what happens when you feed a recirculating ball steering box 2,500 to 3,000 psi of unregulated pressure, so I am also going to get a pressure regulator.(The wrong pumps got sent to supply from the manufacture, with no built in regulator it blew a recirculating ball pump to pieces.)
The recirculating ball type steering box on the weapons load trucks I work on call for 850psi +/- 50psi or 875psi +/-25psi depending on which steering box it has. I figure that sub 900psi number is good starting point.
The 1.3gpm of that HPU should not be able to reach 2500psi with a relatively gigantic recirculating ball steering box attached to it but I would rather not find out the hard way.
If that doesn't work I will try something else.
Power steering delete - EcoModder
New wiki page:
http://ecomodder.com/wiki/index.php/...ic_conversions
Still working on it.