144 electric power steering retrofit

[Peterbee]

Has anyone fitted an electric power steering system to a 144?

[Steve 940]

I would also be very interested on this topic, as I have a 145 project waiting attention, and PS would be so much easier for the better half to use.

I had looked at a couple of suppliers

https://easysteer.co.uk/

https://www.ezpowersteering.co.uk/

https://www.holden.co.uk/blog/ez-ele...ower-steering/

Holden say prices from £1200 ish…….

Cheers
Steve

[Bob Meadows]

Not directly 144 related but it may help:~

The EZ system https://www.ezpowersteering.co.uk/ had been fitted to a 1950s
Riley with good results.
Apparently they can do a lot of classics, Holden is avoided in this case.. they are retail marked up inflated prices as are most of the things they sell.
EZ direct had provided a direct & knowledgeable service in many ways.
Hope it helps.
Bob.

[Steve 940]

Originally Posted by Bob Meadows

Not directly 144 related but it may help:~

The EZ system https://www.ezpowersteering.co.uk/ had been fitted to a 1950s
Riley with good results.
Apparently they can do a lot of classics, Holden is avoided in this case.. they are retail marked up inflated prices as are most of the things they sell.
EZ direct had provided a direct & knowledgeable service in many ways.
Hope it helps.
Bob.

Hi Bob,

Many thanks for your input, and I have indeed had a more in depth dig around the EZ website.

As far as I can make out they use the top and bottom splines from the old column and then cut/fit/weld the new electric module somewhere along the column depending on model.

They also claim to be TUV certified, so as long as it true, then it gives some peace of mind for probably one of the most safety critical items. on our cars.

Anyway, I have pinged an enquiry out to them and will update later with their response.

Cheers
Steve

[Bob Meadows]

Hi Steve, the write up and other details in the club magazine (Riley) have been very positive & these series of Riley RMs are heavy beasts -particularly at slow speeds or moving off.
The conversion is never straight forward I suppose but the company had been very helpful with technicalities and I would say a must if doing the conversion, a retail purchase would have to pass you on if difficulties developed.

From memory I believe the system can be adjusted to suit the individual needs.
The result is that the owner/driver could get full use of his car again.. otherwise it would have been lost to him due to a medical problem.

Hope it works out for your project.
Regards Bob.

[142 Guy]

I have installed an EPS unit on my 1971 142 that I extracted from a salvaged Nissan Versa. If you are interested, the description of the installation starts in post #289 in this thread.

https://www.swedespeed.com/threads/w...age-15#replies

The installation should be similar to any 140 up to the dash change in 1973 (or 1974?). I don't know what changes were made to the steering column, if any, in the post dash change cars. The big wrinkle would be the left hand steer versus right hand steer difference.

The two EPS units I considered for my installation were the Nissan Versa unit and the Toyota Prius unit. The primary benefit of these two systems is that they both get their vehicle speed signal over a CAN bus and if there is a CAN bus failure they default to a base assist mode. Turns out that the base level of assist on the Versa is more than adequate for low speed maneuvers and with a little tweaking to castor angles and a smaller steering wheel is good at highway speeds.

I wanted my EPS installation to be completely out of sight in the interior. This means that the drive motor for the EPS unit has to be positioned horizontally so that it is not exposed below the fascia. Clocking the drive motor vertically is not an option because that real-estate is already used up by other stuff. On my left hand steer car the drive motor is clocked towards the heater because there is insufficient horizontal space between the steering column and the lefts side body sheet metal to fit the drive motor. That dictated the selection of the Versa unit because the Prius drive motor is oriented 180 deg relative to the Versa drive and would not physically fit in the available space. A Versa EPS unit will not fit on a right hand steer car (which might be academic if Nissan Versa's are not available in the UK market). However, the Prius drive motor being mounted in the opposite direction should allow for a mirror image of my installation in a right hand steer car.

If you are OK with the drive unit not being out of sight or are prepared to modify the lower fascia to fit then there may be other drive unit mounting options.

With a 14" steering wheel and running about 1.5 - 2 degrees positive caster the steering assist is close to ideal. I think increasing the caster to around 3 degrees positive might be ideal for highway driving; but, so far it has been good enough that I have not been motivated to go through the process of changing the shims to alter the caster and then resetting the camber. Access to the alignment adjusting shims is not exactly convenient on the 140.

Volvo's answer to no power steering on the 140 was a steering wheel the size of a hula hoop, narrow tires and zero to a tiny bit of positive caster. If you install EPS of any kind I suggest that you ditch the original steering wheel and increase the positive caster, otherwise you will find the steering over assisted at highway speeds and the minimal self centering in the steering caused by Volvo's use of tiny caster angles will make the car prone to wander because of driver input. Increasing the positive toe might be something worth considering; but, I have not experimented with that. Adjusting toe angles is much, much easier than adjusting caster angles; but comes with increased tire wear and a reduction in steering sensitivity.

When I did the EPS installation on my 142, another 142 owner donated a spare steering column and mounting bracket from a salvage car for me to use as a donor for the purpose of cutting and fitting to test the installation. I didn't want to cut up my steering column and mounting bracket only to find out that this was not going to work. The agreement was that I paid for shipping the parts and if this worked out I would provide details on how to do the installation so I ended up creating a fairly detailed installation guide. I think I still have that document on my hard drive so if anybody is interested send me a message with an email that accepts attachments and I will forward it to you (if I can find it). It covers a Versa EPS installation on a left hand steer car; but, a lot of the issues addressed will be similar for a right hand steer car.

As a final observation, I would not get overly obsessed about safety issues with the EPS unit itself. If you have complete failure of the drive unit you just revert to no assist with a tiny bit of additional drag which increases steering effort. If you want to obsess over safety issues I would obsess over Volvo's cheap ass implementation of a collapsible steering column with that offset break away section just above the steering box. After a few years of service the bushings get all wimpy and contribute to lots of steering slop and they have been known to work themselves loose. When I did my installation the Versa steering column came with a collapsible splined lower column which I used to replace the existing Volvo lower column section. The splined column eliminated all the flex associated with the Volvo break away column section.

[Steve 940]

Hi 142 Guy,

Thank you so much for such a detailed response, much appreciated.

From the sound of your description, you worked up your power steering set up using the Nissan Versa unit yourself, and having just had a very quick view of the Swedespeed link detailing the build, some very fine engineering solutions sir. I will review the thread in detail later this evening for a better understanding, but I think with my limited skills, getting an off the shelf kit will be the way forward for me.

https://www.ezpowersteering.co.uk/el...-steering-set/

This seems to be a Dutch company with agents here in the UK and mainland Europe, one benefit they do claim is that their installations have passed the German TUV testing, and if the system fails, then the steering reverts to as it was before the conversion.

They have the 1800 and Amazon listed on their site, so hopefully they have the templates for these in place. I have emailed to ask if they can do a 145.

Your comments regarding the size of the original wheel are duly noted, I believe the ezpowersteering set up, has a concealed switch where the level of assistance can be varied. Hopefully this would allow me to retain the original wheel, as I rather like the retro spindly wheel and horn ring.

I have emailed the company to request further information and perhaps an idea of costs, so hopefully I can update with this information later.

Cheers
Steve

[142 Guy]

I did investigate the EZpowersteering option. My recollection was that they did not offer a 'drop in' replacement for the 140; but, they would do custom installations. The custom installations required that the car be taken to an 'agent' for fitting which turned out to be a non-option for me because the agent was > 5000 km away and on the other side of an international border. Their agent did offer a non customized option for self install; but, that looked like it was going to require some significant fettling so once I was faced with that the Versa unit was much more attractive for me.

My son and I sourced the Versa EPS from a wrecked car at a pick and pull salvage yard. I think I paid either $35 or $50 $Cdn for the complete steering column assembly with the EPS. That kind of established a framework for how much I was prepared to fork over for this installation .

EZ has been in the business for a significant period of time so I expect that they offer a good product. If you can get them to do an install for a reasonable price and access to the agent is convenient I expect that the installation will be a quality product. With a little fine tuning with a smaller steering wheel and some experimentation on caster angles I expect that you will be very happy with the system.

I will add one cautionary note. The EPS unit seems to exacerbate slop issues that may be present in the existing 140 steering box / steering gear. Make sure that your idler arm is in good condition. I upgraded to one of those brass bushing models. If your steering box is tired you might want to investigate whether you can find a 'less tired' box. The revised lower steering shaft arrangement that I have would make it much easier for me to install a manual steering rack if I were so inclined. Every once in a while when I get bored I start looking at after market steering racks as possible candidates for replacement of my steering box.