Electric Power Steering Adjustment Project - Help Needed
 

I'm considering a simple electrical mod to attempt to see if we can modify the weight of the power steering. Long story short, I'm going to follow the outline of the link below as our PS step up should be similar. The attached pic shows the basic outline of the electrical modifications which appear cheap in terms of cost and fairly straight forward. I want to do this in a way that is both clean and reversible with minimal wiring damage.

Ultimately I'm trying to see if I can increase the weight at lower speeds.


http://www.autospeed.com/cms/article...ering&A=111532

A couple of questions for folks with electrical component experience.

1. What guage wire does our car use for ECU components? I think it's 22 guage but I'm not positive and I want to use t taps for the part of the project.

2. What component can I use to intercept the signal wire that would allow the mod but also be reversible? I know I could cut and simply repair the wire if the project didn't work as expected but I would like to avoid damaging the power steering wiring harness as much as possible.

3. Any other general thoughts or comments would be appreciated.

I see you are on michelin PSS. Those are really light tires. If you ever go stickier tires (Dunlop Zii, hankook rs3, etc.) steering will feel heavier because those tires are heavier. I wouldn't mess with the EPS if I were you. Just my 2 cents.

Yep, get better tires, problem solved.

The change in steering weight between my snows (205/50/17 Hankook iPike RS') and summer tires ( 225/47/17 Dunlop ZII's, Hankook RS3's or Yokohama AD08R's) is huge.

I'll third that comment and add that changes in wheel offset can also have a big impact. I run 17x8ETR35 wheels with 225/45 Michelin Pilot Super Sports in the summer. The tire contact patch is significantly wider and stickier than stock and its 1/2" further outboard. The steering effort at parking lot speeds is MUCH higher than stock. It is higher than stock at speed too, though not by as much, and the feel seems to be better than stock as well. I'd love to try the same tires on rims with closer to stock offset (+48), but such is life.

I'm currently on 205/50R17 Conti ExtremeWinterContacts on the stock rims. Makes quite a contrast to the summer set up in terms of steering effort and feel.

The power steering is adjusted by the many factors that are being monitored. I wouldn't mess with it.