Are you going to do one of the popular electric power steering pumps or stick with an engine driven pump?

I'm not brave enough to switch to electric steering just yet. My plan at the moment is to use a Corvette type of PS pump. I do not have it all figured out yet. I tried to make a Saginaw pump work but ran into clearance issues.

The Covette PS pump looks something like this.

I went with the smaller pump also.

Power steering is cool for a big/wide front tire, manual trans street application.
Where you're one-handing it often and the tires fight you that much more.
Makes it easy to just throw around in parking lots and so on.

My GTX is originally 4 speed power steering, only reason I went to MS
was weight/a little easier with the headers/the pitman seal was leaking anyway.
Put on one of those B-Van adapters, thinking how simple it'd be to go back to PS someday later on.

Yeah trying to steer one handed around a corner while I'm shifting the transmission is what gets me. PS should make that a whole bunch easier. It was also a bit of a wrestling match at really slow speeds in a parking lot or parallel parking. I have the 20:1 manual box. I tried the 16:1 manual box a few years back and it was almost impossible to drive at slow speeds.

10 years ago you’re dumping all the unnecessary heavy conveniences, and now you want it all back! Yep, definitely wussified!
Yeah, I’m softening up too.

The Borgenson PS box is quite a bit lighter than a factory PS box. I tried to move a couple of factory PS boxes the other day and just about busted something. Those boys are heavy. The Borgenson box is only 24 lbs which is heavier than a manual box but isn't terrible. The PS pump weighs a few more pounds so I'm probably adding 20 lbs to the front end with the swap. I did pull the cast iron manifolds off this time around and replaced them with tri-y headers so I'm guessing that the total weight will be roughly the same. I swapped the heavy 11 inch rear drum brakes for disc brakes last year and that saved me some weight. I'm also in the process of removing the entire center gauge panel which was fairly heavy. I don't need it anymore now that I have the digital dash installed. So I might actually be dropping weight when everything is totaled up.

Hey Andy is there a write-up somewhere for that PS pump swap? Or are you making it up as you go?

I'm making it up as I go. I've tracked down a pump, pulley and bracket so far but I still need to figure out hoses and fittings. I'll post pictures on here as I figure it out. The Borgenson swap is interesting. Obviously I'm not the first guy to do this swap since people have been doing it for a few years now, but it isn't exactly a bolt on setup. Bergman Auto Craft has a few parts to make the swap easier so that is a good start but in my case I needed to go with the Type II pump and he didn't have the brackets for it.

http://www.bergmanautocraft.com/products.php?cat=1

Where did you find the brackets? That pump and bracket looks very neat and tidy.

Kevin

Is that Bergman bracket designed for the stock style pump? I don't know if I'm going to get in to replacing my steering box but I've always hated my huge leaky stock pump. It would be nice to just modify my stock bracket. I'm going to build new brackets to swap on a high amp GM one wire alternator that I had built for my Grand National before I swapped on the later serpentine stuff.

Do you have a part # for that Corvette pump?

I ordered a bracket kit from Unisteer. Just about everybody and their brother sells a Type II pump so they are super easy to find. You can get cheap ones on ebay and Amazon or you can buy super expensive circle track pumps from KRC. I went middle of the road and bought a pump from Detroit Speed. I don't think I needed to spend that much money but this is my first rodeo and so I went with a vendor who I trust. Next time around I might just buy a cheap pump from Rock Auto and bolt it in.

The Bergman bracket is really just the Hoffman's Winners Circle bracket which you can get from most anybody so nothing magic there. If you don't have the correct bracket for a Saginaw pump then you can get that one. I did learn that Saginaw pumps are cheap to rebuild. The rebuild kits are only $10 but it does require some tools to take them apart and put them back together. You can get rebuilt Saginaw pumps for $30 on Rock Auto. What killed the Saginaw pump for me was that I didn't have any room for the pressure line fitting. So that forced me to switch to the Type II pump.

I like that power steering setup Andy. Looking forward to a writeup on it.

I'm making some progress on the motor mounts. Mostly I've figured out what won't work so I'll count that as progress. I have a fixture to hold the engine in the correct location while I bend up different shapes. The Borgeson PS box is in place and it seems to fit okay. I'm not so sure I like the angle that Borgeson puts these boxes at, it looks odd and it will force the couple to flex a few degrees every time the steering wheel is turned but I guess they designed it that way for a reason. I did have to trim one of the motor mount lugs on the block to clear the steering box but that didn't take too much time. The headers appear to clear the PS box by a fair amount. I did get the entire steering column rebuilt and rewired so it should be good to go. Also got new gaskets and seals for everything involved.

andy, i like your removable core support bracketry. i will be doing the same to my charger.

Andy.
Would you consider that removable rad core brace strong as a bolted in part as apposed to the factory welded in one piece?

I'm sure the bolt in design gives up some strength but I can pull the engine and trans with the shifter linkage still attached to the trans in just a few minutes. With the stock core support in place it gets very, very difficult to wiggle the whole assembly out of there, especially with a deep oil pan. I can gain the strength back in other places so that doesn't worry me. I prefer to be able to slide the engine in and out quickly since I'm constantly working on this car.

Why are you using the C and A body BB driver side motor mounts?