bbjsw10 - I spoke with a seller on eBay that had a ton of power steering racks for sale if he had a manual one that would fit a civic, and lo-and-behold he sent me the link to an auction of his for a manual rack for a Civic, so I know I can find a rack that fits, but it's $120 for the part, $20 for shipping, and a $75 core charge you get back when you send him back your rack.... so that's $140 total, and a lot of time to install the new rack compared to the 5 mins it took me to figure out how to pull off the belt
As far as deleting the alternator, my route can vary rather drastically from day to day. One day I might drive 2 mies, and the next 250, so I'd need something that could handle long drives like that. Would a deep cycle battery work on such long trips? How long would a deep cycle last before it dies? Also, what is involved in deleting the alt? Anyone have a writeup on it?
Jeece - It's really not that bad without a radio
On the way back from Ontario earlier this week I had shut off the radio around midnight when my fiance fell asleep in the car, and left it off the rest of the way home (~8 hrs.)
She also lives an hour away from my house, and I usually try to leave the vent fans and radio off the entire trip. I'm thinking about just using my iPod and headphones whie driving. I once saw a guy doing that in an old beaten up car and thought "man that's ghetto" but now I'm kind of liking the idea
Vince HX - I found this forum post (
Honda-Tech.com: Acura Integra Type-R: How to: power steering to manual ) that outlines the whole process, but it seems the original poster spent quite a bit of money ($80) on fittings, hoses, etc. but you could do it cheaper. If I was going to go through all that trouble, I think I'd just swap for a manual rack. I think the reason they go through all of that is the power rack is geared better for their autocross racing compared to a regular Civic DX manual rack(correct me if I'm wrong
) I don't zip around on the roads, so it wouldn't hurt me to use the manual rack