1st Gen R53 Cooper S Finally, Gen1 Power Steering Delete Kit Available Soon!!!!!

wow, hadn't read this thread for awhile and them I see these....brings back some memories (nightmares lol) of NAVAIR...(still have a couple of sets of them in the toolbox..)

there was some discussion of the PS delete on FB awhile back and people acting like you can't drive like that, lol told em my '51 F1 drives just fine without PS and weighs a helluva a lot more than a MINI..glad to see you're still running it

 

This thread persists on my computer, even though I have read it. Maybe if I add to it it will finally get marked as read.

 

Hey everybody, I'm digging this thread up from the depths having found it via a Google search. Does anyone have any experience with a manual steering converted car with narrow tires? Something in the 175 to 195mm wide range. I found a mini locally for cheap that needs a PS pump and I'm kind of thinking I'd just drop this re-circulation kit into it to eliminate the problem. It's got R81 aka 7-hole rims on it, so the tires are pretty narrow.

 

Not intentionally...skinny tires for a front wheel drive? Why may I ask?

 

195 is the standard width tire for an R50. I’m not planning on running anything wider. Wider tires increase the steering effort required and we’ve heard from a few people in thia thread who have found the steering to be quite heavy with 215 or 225 width summer tires. I wonder if the effort is still high with factory width tires?

 

Following...

 

All I have to say about this is when my MINI's alternator died the power steering died due to lack of volts. The car was damn near undriveable. I can't imagine wanting to do this & ditch the P/S. My tires were 205-50-16, not very wide.

IIRC the oem tire size on the Cooper was 175 width.

 

I have one of these for my car and it has been sitting in my toolbox for years because I don’t want to install it now. I did at one time and the price was cheap so I ordered one.

The power steering delete is not as hard to turn the car with a power steering failure because of pump or alternator failure. The fluid is still in the rack and you can turn the car much easier then a car with a failed pump.

 

Hey Minsanity,

Mine just started to fail so I am ordering another pump now. Thank god they have come down to about $380.00 +100 core deposit.

I still have the Condor PRW steering delete kit in my toolbox after all these years if anyone wants it for free +shipping.

 

No not a dealership. I can get it from a well respected vendor on-line. (Not ECS Tuning as they suck)

 

FCP euro. They are like rock auto.

 

Hey Folks,

Dave O. was kind enough to send me his Condor manual steering conversion block last month and my R53 as kind enough to kill its power steering pump last Saturday. So, it was the perfect opportunity to finally try a car with manual steering for the first time in my life. It is something I have been wondering about for a very long time. I've put about 100km on the car over the last few days and I now have a good impression of the manual steering feel in my MCS. The required steering effort is VERY high and the feedback through the steering wheel is VERY clear and informative. My car is running Continental Extreme Contact DWS 205/40R17s. The suspension setup is totally stock. I am hoping to get the chance to try some alternate wheel/tire combinations on the car over the next month, so I will report back with how changing the tire width effects the steering effort and feedback.

My thoughts on the driving experience:
The manual rack does provide unfiltered road feedback through the wheel. If I drive over an expansion joint mid corner I can feel that through the wheel, I can feel changes in the throttle through the wheel mid corner, mid corner bumps have a huge effect on the steering effort and the tracking of the car feels different- it tends to self center and track straight on the highway more than it did before.
The steering effort required with my current configuration is unacceptably high and I would NOT recommend going manual with wide tires if you intend to drive fast (or slow haha). The mid corner steering effort is extremely high, not as high as with a dead pump hooked up, but it still very high.

Does anyone know if a steering rack for the R50/53 with a higher steering ratio exists? The standard R53 rack is 13:1. If it would be possible to fit a rack with a ratio above 15:1 perhaps it would be possible to get the great road feedback and avoid the high steering effort.

 

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.