SilvaDragon

OK, track denizens, did you remove the power steering
pump? Why or why not? How much weight does it save?
Which belt did you use? Loop back the rack or disassemble it
and remove the seals?

wallyman424

uhh, removing the power steering pump would disable your power steering. why would you want that?

SilvaDragon

I'm just trouble that way, I guess.

wallyman424

seriously though, driving a vette with big sticky tires sans power steering would be incredibly difficult.

SilvaDragon

OK, that's basically the kind of feedback I was looking for.

In lots of other cars, I see manual racks and power-steering deletes
are pretty much standard fare. But for all my searching, I couldn't
find discussion of it anywhere on the forums, and I guess maybe
that's why.

tcmc5

You definitely want to keep your power steering.

rasrboy

Even if you had arms like Arnold Swartz ?>+#$@ , you could not wheel it around very long.

davidfarmer

I had my power steering go out on the first lap of a World Challenge race at Rd Atlanta. While I did manage to finish the race, it was not easy. I lost one position, simply because I could not manage to be as nimble with the controls as I needed to be.

Now, a properly configured manual rack (not a broken power rack) might be managable, but unlike a Porsche 911, there is a ton of weight (literally) on the steering tires, and it takes a lot of work.

burners

I agree with David and I have experience running a power rack manually. While it was not on a Corvette I ran a quick ratio rack on a '70 Nova with 265 wide tires on the front. It was fine to drive but it didn't have a lot of positive caster in the alignment like C5's and C6's have so the effort is going to be a bit more. Realistically there is so much weight on the front end of a Corvette and with only about 5 lbs and maybe 5 hp to gain from removing it I don't think that little bit is worth the effort. If you still want to try you need to remove the high pressure and return lines from the rack, turn the rack to full lock, end-to-end about 10 times to get most of the fluid out and then plug the holes with dust caps. Figuring out a serpentine system is up to you.

The reason why a power rack it so difficult to steer when it breaks is you are now pumping the fluid with the rack rather than the pump. If a dump valve where plumbed into both lines and then into a catch can you could make things a lot better if a failure occured during a race.

Akcelr8 N VA

Funny this should come up. I just finished running Summit Point main course this past weekend with a bad pump. I didn't have power assist in any turn with the exception of turn 9. I guess because of the increased rpm for that turn. I run pretty hard in the instructor group and my first session was spent trying to "get the feel" of fighting back when the steering wheel resisted. I have to admit though, that once I got used to it, the amount of road feel I got was nice but quick steering transitions were tricky. It sure would be nice to have a "reduced assist" setup to capitalize on the road feel. By the way, am I doing damage to the rack by running it like this? In the pits we listened to the pump and rack as I turned the wheel lock-to-lock but didn't here any growls or other "bad" noises and the fluid level stayed constant thoughout the day. I did bleed the rack prior to the day but it didn't help. I'm swapping out the pump tonight. --Sorry about the thread hijacking.

wallyman424

Running with a bad pump has got to be bad. Clearly the pump would be getting worse, but i think running the rack without a good pump is hard on the gears inside there.

but you know my theory on things, run it till it breaks!

Akcelr8 N VA

I think you're right on both comments!

Locke

Dang Aaron, what ever happened to "steering with the throttle"!

burners

While less power assist from a bad pump will be harder on the gears it won't be enough to cause them to fail prematurely. The greater danger is from the bad pump seizing and messing everything up.