Hey guys got an idea from another member on here and gonna throw it out there to see if anyone else is interested.

Gonna offer a service to depower your steering rack the proper way. The service includes complete teardown depower and put it back together.

The price is going to be $150 and with that you get new inner and outer tie rods and new dust boots.

 

What are the benefits to converting a power rack to manual when compared to going to manual, besides the obvious quicker ratio.

 

Other than the quicker ratio, I would guess availability of parts. For example, I've been waiting for a manual rack to show up for 6 months. I instead depowered my power rack.

 

I read that the 15:1 ratio (or something like that) of the s4 power rack (I think?) wasn't ideal for converting, but didn't see anything as to WHY that was... any comments to that one?

 

The S4 compared to the S5 is a heavier in effort after conversion.

 

also I enjoy the feel of the depowered rack over the power steering and another benefit is the extra room and less belts and pulleys in my engine bay

 

Why should I not just plug the holes in my power rack?

 

theres a seal in side the rack that builds pressure if not done correctly there will be sloppy steering after a while

 

exactly if you just loop the lines or plug the holes your going to have an awful steering feel because now you have no power assist to help push the fluid and seals. But in a depowered rack we get rid of the seals and exchange the fluid for grease for a much better feel

 

I pulled the pump and lines off of my car and halfass pinched the lines on the rack. Almost 10 years ago now. Drives fine and the steering feels great.

 

I have a depowered rack in our 2nd gen race car that was done by removing the seals and filling it with grease. ITS TERRIBLE. After 20 minutes on the track at Shannonville I feel like I have wrestled with Hulk Hogan. I would kill to be able to go back to power steering if I could figure out a way to make it work without a computer and not have fluid cavitate at 8,000rpm.

 

LOL, I just switched back to power steering for the same reason....best choice is to seek out a proper FC manual rack

 

its your own preference ... I prefer the depowerd rack for feel and space but to eachs own

 

Al, you're a girl.

I have run my depowered S4 rack for almost 10 years now. No issues at all. My main reason was to prevent the oil from cavitating at high rpm's. In an S4, the power assist drops of substantially at higher vehicle speeds, so most of the time I was driving "manually" anyways. Would I use a power rack on track if I could get one that wouldn't puke P/S Fluid out after 10 minutes, of course I would. I loved the car with power steering. I could race it for 3 hours and not feel any muscle strain. It also substantially reduced steering kickback when you were forced to clip a curb.

Now I think the question should be, what can I do to my stock P/S setup to make it live at higher (8,000 rpm plus for extended periods of time) revs and higher sustained loads?

Eric

 

Put the appropriate sized pulley on the pump so when you are at 8000rpm the pump spins as if you were running the engine at 4000rpm?

I dunno, probably would suck at idle, but idling is for sissys

 

I thought of that, but as the power steering is really only needed at slower speeds and larger pulley reduces the effect at slower speeds, I thought that solution was self defeating in a way.

Thats why I just took it off.

Eric