Update: After running manual steering for 8 months I've finally gone back in and installed a new power steering pump. The driving experience is oh so different now. Its almost like a different car. Going back to power steering now its obvious that there is nearly no steering feel and that there is a huge amount of information lost through the PS pump. With the manual steering you feel the weight of the steering increase as you transfer weight to the front wheels, you feel every mid corner undulation, and every bit of slip mid corner is so very obvious. This comes at quite a high price though. Parallel parking and low speed driving is really tough. Any sort of rapid direction change becomes extremely difficult as the steering effort required to chuck the car into a corner is so high that its just not possible. Approaching the limit on dry, warm tarmac at high speed is difficult as the steering effort required it so high its not possible to sustain such efforts.
On the highway the manual steering setup is absolute heaven. The car centers itself strongly from the caster effect of the suspension geometry and high speed corners in driving up to 8/10ths require only moderate steering effort (still higher than anything with the PS pump though). In the city the manual steering is a bit of disaster and tighter things get the worse it is.
Things that make the steering effort lower: Rain, snow, ice, narrower tires, higher speed, and rearward weight transfer.
In the end I'm a bit torn on manual steering it has some amazing benefits, and some huge drawbacks. For any sort of high performance driving under the clock PS is definitely the way to go as you can reach the limits of the car and move it around so much more easily. On the other hand the car feels so isolated and dead with the PS pump in place that it totally changes the character of the car. One day I'd really like to fabricate some adaptors to install a steering rack from a Civic or something similar with a 16:1~ish ratio and give that a go. A slower rack along with a larger diameter steering wheel could really be great. I still don't think I would want it for AutoX, but for street driving it could potentially really make the car a joy.
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How it works: the block has pass-thru holes for fluid & air to smoothly flow from 1 side to the other upon steering. It's to lessen the resistance.
Just got an email from Condor.
They're doing an initial batch of 30pcs. Expected launch in a coupla weeks. They'll put up a link once this is out. The wait is almost over.
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UPDATE: Here is the new link to the MINI one.
whoo hoo
Mini UHMW Powersteering Delete | Condor Speed Shop-
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