Removing power steering (Page 1 of 2)

The trick is to route the lines on the PS rack to each other so fluid can flow.  If you cap them it makes it a lot harder to turn the wheel.
At least, that's the trick for hondas.
Personally, i'd like to have PS if i'm going to be driving hard for an hour or two.  I think it's worth the ten pounds.

I think you will have a hard time finding a non-power rack for most modern cars.

I am sure there are articles on the Interweb about converting to non-power.

We had PS until Buttonwillow when the pump decided it had lived a long and happy life and started gushing fluid everywhere.  Later we learned that it is a weak point in Miatas and most Spec guys pull them off anyway.  Since then, we haven't had PS and I haven't noticed much difference, particularly at speed.  It would be nice to have, but not necessary.
Like Bobnova says, if you can, route the lines back into eachother.

I'm usually a fan of manual steering, even "depowered" power steering.  Adds lightness and simplicity, improves steering feel.  Good stuff.

But... this is an endurance race, and the easy it is to physically drive the car, the less fatigued your drivers will be near the end of their stint, and the less likely your car is to get damaged or black-flagged due to a dumb driver error.

Leave the power steering in.  Max out the caster and add a touch of toe-out if you want more steering feel/responsiveness.

we discussed removing the leaking pump on our mx6 but there isnt any way to route the belt w/out it and still catch all the pulleys right with a serpentine  , we also thought about just leaving it on and running the lines on the rack back into each other but then the pump would eventually lockup from lack of lubrication and smoke the belt so keep that in  mind               
we have decided to just leave it ,fix the leakyness, and run a bigger better cooler   if the pump ever dies we will already have a home made idler to take its place using the pump on our spare motor as a " fab " pattern

You could open the pump up and remove the impeller.  Then you can fill it with fluid for lubrication but it won't actually pump anything.  Should work fine, but i've never actually tried it.

Same here the Miata I raced at CMP in the fall 2009 race had no power steering and really didn't even feel tired after a 2 hr + stint in the car. I didn't know that the car didn't have power steering until after the race was done.

But I think once you go above a certain weight you do need the power steering to stay fresh for long stints.

Just a thought from a noob.  Why not ditch the power steering pump and rather than running the hoses between the sides of the rack, just run them up to the ps tank.  It would allow for easy grunge free(ish) fluid swaps to help keep seals from leaking, bleed the system with ease, and give more fluid volume in the system.  Would that work fine?   A few feet of line and a couple of quarts of fluid aren't going to make a roll of tp in a shit storm worth of difference on these crapboxes.  Or are you just going to say no and cite cleaning up the crap in the bay and getting rid of stuff you technically don't need.

Just make sure you check your steering shaft/coupler/flex disc, right?

I've done one with and one without (in a heavy car).  So much nicer with PS.  I say use PS until it blows, then go manual.  A cheap PS cooler can add some life to the pump too.

Mole, I consider Lemons more or less war of the wrenchers.

There tends to be the right way (SCCA way) to do things, then there's the Lemons way.

McPherson struts adjustability is based on the chassis and how they are used.  Not specifically on the fact that they are McPherson struts.

You have to look at what you have, what you want to do and figure out how to make that happen.  There may be parts you can buy but this is Lemons.

Brute force, heat, mechanical abilities and fabrication skills all come in to play here.

Time to start doing some head scratching.

First, quit spending money on alignment shops.  This is Lemons.  Learn to take a few simple measurements for yourself.

Caster can be adjusted with a strut suspension in the same way camber is.  For extra camber, you slot the bolt holes at the top of the strut tower inward so that the whole works can be tilted inward giving more static camber.  To increase caster, you want to tilt the top of the assembly more rearward (correct me if I have that backwards, guys), so angle your camber slots in that direction and you'll get more caster.

The exact numbers aren't critical for Lemons racing, just try to do the same thing on each side so that caster and camber are close to the same left and right, and be sure to reset your toe when you're done.