Steering, Suspension, & Brakes

Plausible deniability, there's no place like matrix, there's no place like matrix. Dorothy-dear- jus' run with your grand illusion. For some, there is no gravity, earth jus' sucks. What was the subject ??

Did any non-Power Steering guys get the chance to try the electric power steering at the BritishV8 meet?

I vollunteered my car to several, but never seemed to get the time! Bill Yobi and Tim Duhamel did drive the autocross in it. Bill clipped the first cone turning in too fast on his first run. I'm not sure about anyone driving Charles' or Paul's cars. Lots of interest in the system. I took a unit for show and tell.

Thanks Mike! I was just curious. I think it's a great idea.

I did not drive Mike's car this time. Man oh man, where did the time go?

I did sit in Charles Long's car in Townsend back in the spring & verified Mike's comment about one finger steering & that was with the car sitting still. Pretty cool that you can dial more or less assist as you prefer.

I had Mike power it up and played with the wheel with it parked. Very nice, and I doubt you lose any significant amount of road feel if at all.

Jim

Brenda drove Charles MGB around the parking lot, she was amazed at how easy it turned like a later car on the road feel.
So need to add to the honey due list for her build.

I wanted her to do the same with Dan Masters GT, but as Carl said time flew by so fast.

Calvin, I think I heard you say you have a Flamming River column, is it tilt? I have a street rod buddy that want me to take a look at his rod and see I think he can add the EPS to his Flamming River tilt. When I look I will leave a reply here.

Charles, Yes it is the one that has tilt, and it is the shorty one. It may take some more firewall fab work, but anything for Brenda is worth the extra work. I don't know if I want to cut up the Flamming River column at this point, since the $ was kicking me hard in the rear cheek.

I think Ken H. has a Fiero tilt in the TR6, might look at that. Both being GM might work, then I have a tilt Camaro column, I will look at it. I also have a Honda Civic tilt, I will look at all of them.

Are you going to reworking the dash? If you are reworking the dash, most anything might work.

Spent some time in the garage and worked on EPS for the TR6.

Used a lot of the Saturn Vue steering column parts and TR6 column parts to make the TR6 column with EPS.

The TR6 column is very thin walled aluminum, so bought 1.50 120 walled aluminum tubing, cut off a piece at 1 3/4" long. I cut the TR6 column down, then pressed the column into the 1 3/4" part (using HF press). Drilled and tapped the pressed in area into the Saturn metal tubing 3 bolt hole flange that was cut down. The outside diameter of the pressed in column fit pretty tight inside the Saturn metal flange part. drilled 4 holes that were tapped with 8-32 machine screws at 3/8" long. Cut down the steering wheel side of the Saturn main shaft so the about 1" spline was left. The slide on piece from the Saturn column onto the main shaft, I cut down right where it flairs out. Then cut down the TR6 steering shaft (steering wheel side) to the right length, Tig welded the TR6 steering shaft to the cut flaired end of the Saturn slide on main shaft. That took care of the steering wheel side.

The fire wall side I bought a Woodward steering joint that matches the spline, and has 3/4" weld in on the other end. Cut down the TR6 steering shaft and Tig welded it in. Took the outer telescopic Saturn tube and cut it to length.Took out the bearing in the end and pressed another on in that was 3/4"ID. Tig welded that to the steel mounting shaft on the EPS unit. Then drilled a hole in the bottom rib of the EPS unit, slowly turned in a bolt to thread the aluminum. Used that hole and fabed out a brace bracket and tig welded to the Saturn tube. Made a aluminum spacer under the bracket for the bolt to go through.

Hope that all makes sense.










The next task is to get the original steering column out and fit this EPS unit in. Will need to move the ignition switch into the dash or transmission tunnel brace. The key location on a 74 TR6 for locking steering, is in a bad location I have always thought.





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/24/2015 10:04PM by 74ls1tr6.

More photos!

Calvin, Wow, Looks like factory engineering!

Looks like the Sunbeam Alpine and Tiger guys discovered electric power steering back in 2012:

[catmbr.org]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/25/2015 04:55PM by mgb260.

Yeah, but this thread pre-dates (Nov. 2011) that. ;)

And power steering was first installed on an MG circa ~1995, as documented here: [en.m.wikipedia.org]

The words Alpine and Tiger are being used together as though they are the same. In this case, nothing could be farther from the truth as the steering components are entirely different. I think that step one on such an endeavor would be "Remove engine". But the idea is a hard one to shake. Has anyone ever seen any information on Alpine EPS?

Bill