you can remove the power steering pump, however you still need to keep some container there that will allow power steering fluid to go into the steering rack and back up. DVPGSR has done this and has covered it before in this forum. Search.

 

Energy is spent turning the belt and both pullies even if the car is at rest.


In addition, once you strip AC and PS you can drop down to a one-belt crank pulley. That's a significant rotating mass loss.

 

i doubt if the power gain is still as significant as doing someting else that is miniscule; for example, like taking 1lb off ur flywheel.

 

I'm on the fence about it. h:

I personally would like reduce the amount of assistance, but I wouldn't want to eliminate it entirely. If there was a way to under-drive the pump and give the steering a bit more feel, I'd be all over it.

My old GTi weighed about as much as a DC4 and it didn't have power steering.
While the feedback through the wheel was great at speed, parallel parking was a pain. h:

From the standpoint of straight-line speed...yes, the power steering system uses engine power at all times. Removing the pump, fluid and lines will return more power to the wheels (although not much) and it will cut weight by a bit.

Heck, if you really wanted to, you could probably retrofit a manual steering rack from a base EG Civic. :dunno:

 

You don't want to do that, the ratio on the manual rack sucks.

 

Good feedback, as with most threads, this morphs into something beyond what was originally intended (see all the coments on A/C and the feel of power/manual steering vs. the orginal discussion just regarding power) but its all good and pertinent stuff nonetheless.

One other thing I did not mention that a friend of mind who used to do research for Honda did mention was that some of the components in the steering assembly are made to tolerances with power assist in mind. Take away the power and eventually things are going to break. Essentially, some components are not made as strong as they are in manual systems because they don't need to be a strong because of the power assist. He said that if you do remove the power from your system your going to want to do a power/manual conversion because at some point your going to break some teeth off somewhere.

Other comments: Some people said above that removing the power steering pump alone is going to give you increased power. Really? How much parisitic drag could possibly be generated by turning a power steering pump that while driving straight is not being tasked with doing anything? I would bet the resistence is almost nill. But, scientific evidence I have not

Other notes:

Yes LT6916 I did read DVPGSR's thread on his P/S removal and breather, hence this discussion.

Good points made:

- Removing P/S creates space.
- Removing P/S is for preference of steering, not for power.
- Removing P/S and A/C and going to a single belt under drive pulley will make a
difference, I would hazzard a guess of about 4-7hp gained depending on vehicle
make and running with your A/C on vs. off.

Thanks again to those who posted, good discussion.

 

to bad all threads couldn't be like this one....good job with this thread themillman

 

Thanks StreetShark, Ninj4r and SPOONFed for the props, just tryin' to give a little back to those from whence I've learned so much. It would take hours just to list all I've learned just in the last month on this site, and oh the dollars saved...........

To verify this point, my wife has already accused me of spending more time on "that stupid Acura site" than with her :uhhok:

 

I get the same nagging from my girlfriend.

 

:lmao: