so im taking out my PS pump and lines because they are leaky and I can't seem to find a cheap manual rack. Should I cap the lines? should I plug the fittings on the rack itself? Anyone have some relatively detailed info on how to do this? I know its not going to be like having a manual rack, but I can't really see spending $100-200 on a used manual rack for a car with 220k miles. I'd rather just remove the defective parts. I already have the pump out, but the lines are still just chillaxin'.



In conclusion, where should I cap the lines/plug the rack?

Ive heard of someone just connecting the lines from either side of the rack to each other and leaving that little loop filled with fluid. I still have my power steering sys hooked up tho, so i cant tell u from personal experience

loop the lines. It keeps the rack lubed so you do not have any problems down the road

I assume you mean the main lines? Obviously I want to get rid of as much line as possible to clean up the engine bay. How far down can I get rid of them?

I had mine looped for a while and I did not like it. I just took off the loop and ran it. So far so good. But, I agree that you should not do that, I just dont care because I dont use the car much. I am planning on converting the rack though this weekend.



There was a pretty cool write up about converting a miata power rack to a manual rack. I cant seem to find it, but you basically take the entire thing apart, weld the holes, pack it with grease, then reassemble.



I will try to find it again.

I remember someone mentioning disassembling the rack and packing it, I just don't have the place to do that right now. I have to keep the car looking assembled and no wheels off in the parking lot, so I'm going to have to loop the line. What didn't you like about it?

buy a tee fitting and get a little reservoir of some sort that has a cap and hook it to the top of the tee and hook the 2 main power steering lines to either side of the tee. I am assuming you have an s4, so you will need to cap the small line off completely. You want to use just regular powersteering fluid and if your connections arent good it will leak, so do it right!

This is the best way i know of to convert power to manual and i am speaking from experience. Cutting the seal and greasing the inside of the rack can require regreasing later and can still cause the rack to wear out, it was designed for pwr steering fluid as a lubricant, so just use that. Its very easy to turn this way, i dont know how you could turn it at all if you just capped the lines. The only thing i can think of that might be better is if you cut the seal inside the rack and capped one line and used the other line with some sort of reservoir to still fill the rack with pwr steering fluid.



I have a manual rack that i will sell for $100 plus shipping, but i think the pwr steering rack converted to manual is better, because you have better ratios, it only takes like 3 turns to go from lock to lock in most cars with pwr steering and it takes 4 with the manual rack. Or something like that i dont remember exactly.

To me, it felt harder to turn than the manual rack.



The reservoir is the best thing to do. It will keep both sides of the seal with the correct amount of fluid and it will allow the pressure to escape quicker.



wankelTII, the lock to lock ratio is exactly why I kept the PS rack.

OK for now I just have the lines looped, until I can find an appropriate reservoir to tee into. It is definitely harder than my TII with manual rack. I had forgotten how hard it was! I removed all the lines including up front where they loop in front of the radiator for cooling. I will buy new line when I go to tee it in, and make a bracket where the lines originally mounted, to give it a nice clean appearance.



WankelTII - do you have a pic of your reservoir setup? I am just wondering how the pressure is released from the reservoir so as to make the wheel easier to turn, because with the lines just looped, in some spots it gets EXTREMELY hard to turn.

when you fill it, jack the front of the car up enough to take most of the weight off of the tires and leave the reservoir cap off. Turn the wheel back and forth, lock to lock, have someone watch the fluid and keep doing it until all the bubbles are out of the system and dont let the fluid level get too low. Be careful and do this slow at first, make sure it isnt going to send fluid everywhere.



I dont have pics and i cant really get any because i dont have that particular car anymore, but i am looking for another one now and that will be one of my first mods, so i will post pics when i can. It seemed fairly easy to steer to me, but i cant really say how it compares to a manual rack, i have driven both, but never in a small enough time frame to make any real comparison.

ok so now my car is beeping at me whenever I turn it on, drive it, etc. It goes "beep beep beep" and continues doing it the whole time it's on. I've tried disconnecting the battery to reset the car, but that didn't work. WTF?

And did you just cut a hole in the cap for the T fitting?

there's a write-up in the FAQ section.



basically once you remove the pump and ****, remove the lines leave everything open. turn the wheel lock to lock then re-center this. this will remove some fluid from the rack, now put bolts in where' the lines used to go ((2)m14x1.5 i think and (1)m12x1.5 i could be wrong, check the FAQ in here)



by removing the little extra bit of fluid but not all of it it allows the fluid inside the rack to move enough to lubricate, and it's not too hard to turn still.



i loved the feeling of my t2 after the conversion, and its much better looking then looping lines.



kevin.

that's your Powersteering computer. best bet is to remove it, it's under the dash, driver's side. either that or pull the fuse. mine never beeped at me so maybe its something thats addressed in the FAQ, havent done it in almost 3 years now so i dont remember 100%.



definitely look at the faq, Freestylefc3s wrote it up.



kevin.

i'll pull the fuse tomorrow morning. I took a power steering reservoir from an S5 and "modified" it a bit for my PS fluid, but if I don't like how that works/feels, I'll remove the lines altogether like mentioned above. I have the reservoir in a temp spot right now, on the battery tray. If I decie to keep it, I'll move it.

OK, I didn't really like the reservoir, so I went with you idea, teknics. I turned it lock to lock both ways to clear out some room, and just put the factory fittings back in with about 3" of line connecting them, because I couldn't find those size bolts tonight, but it still looks good because the line is so short. The feel is already much improved, as I can turn the wheel relatively easily with the car stopped. Thanks for the advice.

i guess it works that way, but you are actually compressing air when you plug the lines, if you didnt get most of the fuid out it would be really hard to turn because the fluid would have to slip past the seal to get from one side of the rack to the other.



If you use a loop and reservoir, you have to have the tee into the bottom of the reservoir. The reservoir needs to be above everything so the bubbles go up and out. I will do a wright up of my own at some point.