List of cars with electric power steering pumps?

About a year and a half ago I finished up the install of one of these electric power steering pump retrofit kits in a MKII Jag. I didn't think to look to much further into it but I loved the feel it had and the fact it was adjustable. Most importantly it sounded awesome. It sounded like the future. The power down whirr made you think doc brown was about to step out of the car.

So besides the MINI and the MR2 what other junkyard electric pumps are out there? Just looking for a list of cars to keep my eye out for.

I am not looking for the steering column assist motors, although they are cool as hell and the fact that you can get a cheap module to control one of those with a pot controlled assist level is awesome. Just not what I am looking for now.

Found this looking for answers, I thought the Opel pump was the only other option:

http://forums.aeva.asn.au/forums/list-of-cars-with-electric-power-steering-pumps_topic3576.html

Most people have switch to electric power columns, mostly from GM (SAAB/Cobalt/Cavalier, etc.) which can be more easily adapted to the bottom of their stock columns. Controllers are available to allow adjustable assist (or some have figured out how to connect it a speed sensor to get the automatic assist to work properly).

It wouldn't be hard to adapt an existing system to use an electric motor to spin the pump. That way you could mount the pump lower in the car and have easier hose routing, etc.

Subaru XT6.

I mounted one in the E30 where I needed the weight... plumbed it to the factory (Z3) rack. It works beautifully but it's a bit on the "hungry for current" side of things. It needs wiring, fuse and switch capable of 80a. The MR2 part is a better choice for that reason alone IMO but this one was super cheap and it's proximity to the battery and cutoff made the load issue less difficult for my application.

The new Mercedes bodied Grand Cherokee and Durango have electric hydraulic power steering.

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: Subaru XT6.

Orders of magnitude cheaper than other options! Adjustable?

Electro-Hydraulic, I'd expect you'll have trouble finding anything other than the MINI and MR2 systems. Personally, I wouldn't bother with electric unless you were going with an EPAS-type rack to eliminate the hydraulic circuit altogether. Honda Insight, S2000, NSX are some of the ones that come to mind that shouldn't be too hard to source.

Ditchdigger wrote:

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: Subaru XT6.

Orders of magnitude cheaper than other options! Adjustable?

You can make any of them adjustable, GPS made a controller for it with an Arduino.

sobe_death wrote: Electro-Hydraulic, I'd expect you'll have trouble finding anything other than the MINI and MR2 systems. Personally, I wouldn't bother with electric unless you were going with an EPAS-type rack to eliminate the hydraulic circuit altogether. Honda Insight, S2000, NSX are some of the ones that come to mind that shouldn't be too hard to source.

Also Echo/Yaris (early ones are best, later ones don't work without a VSS input) and Toyobaru.

'06-up RAV4

Ditchdigger wrote:

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: Subaru XT6.

Orders of magnitude cheaper than other options! Adjustable?

I paid $35 for the unit from a forum member here.

It is adjustable if you can feed it's controller a PWM signal. I used an Arduino with a pot in the dash. I should say that I did it that - and it worked fine but I found that I never really adjusted it. It isn't capable of over-boosting an E30 S52 with 245 slicks. In any car that has an engine heavier than an XT-6 motor and/or wider tires (pretty much every car) I think you would leave it at full blast. It makes the paddock bearable and helps just enough that my arms don't cramp up in 90 minutes of racing.

It's main source of awesome for me is that it has almost no load on the engine on straights at WOT where a belt driven unit has a fairly substantial parasitic loss that gets worse at higher RPM. This one only loads up hard in hard corners/partial throttle conditions where I really don't care that the alternator is robbing power away from the motor as I'm not able to use it then anyway. That and it's berkeleying cool.

Late model volkswagens have electromechanical steering - TDi Sportwagen for example.

In reply to Giant Purple Snorklewacker:

I just picked up an Arduino for playing in spare time (hahahahaha), but also just found out recently how compact and cheap you can get one. I wanted to ask whether it could be done more simply with some sort of timer, gate, capacitor and resistor arrangement, and then realized that that was actually more complicated, not to mention being further from where I have any idea what I'm doing. The era of cheap, powerful embedded computers is neat...

(I still feel strangely compelled to go work out how my hardware version would work... Timer to have consistent pulse starts, capacitor and resistor to control decay, with some sort of high pass to transistor to provide steady output voltage 'til decay hits a certain point then go low? Rheostat for the resistor for adjustment? Any EEs around to tell me how far out in left field I am?)

I think my '12 Fiat 500 has an electric pump.

Powar wrote: I think my '12 Fiat 500 has an electric pump.

Nope that's direct-drive electric (on the column).

555 timer and a handful of parts can make an adjustable PWM circuit. All from radio shack. Google it. Save the Arduino for a more complicated procedure

I'll be building one for a dimmer for 12v LED lighting.

RossD wrote: 555 timer and a handful of parts can make an adjustable PWM circuit. All from radio shack. Google it. Save the Arduino for a more complicated procedure

The Arduino is nice because it's super quick for prototyping. It also runs my fuel gauge and triggers the accusump so it was there already ;)

I's save the whole thing and just feed it 12v. Any car that actually needs power steering isn't going to be overboosted by that unit.

There's a whole bunch. A E36 M3 load in europe that are awesome. Another option state side is the volvo v50/every other mid 2000's volvo. Finding an EHPS pump is hard, finding one that is cheap, readily available, and doesnt require a phd in electrical engineering to make run (I'm staring at all those CAN pumps), is an even bigger challenge. The volvo pump is cheap and easy to work with and pretty much any junk yard in the country will have a bunch of them. The downside is that is isnt as nice of a package as the MR-S pump because its harder to make speed sensitive. I'm going to be going with one in my racecar if a better option doesnt come around.

There's also a bunch of mazda pumps but they fall into the requires a phd to make work category.

Saturn Ion...easily the most absent, vague, unresponsive steering in the history of mankind. Thanks bean counters, electric assist power steering is the worst "innovation" since...ever

I used a MR2 pump on my GRM civic with an integra rack. Worked awesome. Had it on a switch, turned great with 13x8 slicks and still had lots of feel. Couldn't be bothered with hooking up VSS integration. Just a solenoid, the pump and a switch.

ion's aren't electric over hydraulic, just electric.

but yes, zero feeling/feedback.

GameboyRMH wrote:

Powar wrote: I think my '12 Fiat 500 has an electric pump.

Nope that's direct-drive electric (on the column).

Today I learned

RX8

Cobalt?

amg_rx7 wrote: RX8

Nope, thats an electric rack. Even harder to retrofit than an electric column.