Astra power steering pump.
Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2021 8:50 pm
I have been looking at putting an electric power steering column in my car for a while now but I have put a hold on that since the dash is just not designed to take any twisting load and would require a lot of bracing.
A mate of mine put an astra electric pump in his car and decided to buy me a pump too, so why not I guess.
It's a pretty straightforward install. I mounted mine to the inner guard on the left hand side, ran the hoses through the guard and through the original hose bracket.
I used -6AN teflon hose for the pressure side and -8AN regular line for the return since there's low pressure on that side.
Lowes fabrication in Sydney make a mounting bracket for about $135.
There are 4 wires to operate it.
The two main power/ground wires are 8 gauge. I used an anderson plug (the type used for caravan connections etc) for those two due to the high current here.
The small black wire connects to an ignition source. The blue wire can also connect to this wire, but if both wires are provided power at the same time, the pump takes it's time to spool up.
In the Astra, the blue wire is sent 12v by the ECU once the engine is running. So if you delay putting power on the blue wire for a couple of seconds, the pump spins up instantly.
Because my car is EFI, I connected the black wire to my fuel pump wire, then used a delay circuit to apply power to the blue wire 4 second later. My fuel pump will only run for 2 seconds if the engine dies, so this means that my steering pump also won't run if the engine is not running.
If you're incorporating this into a new EFI build and you have spare outputs on your ECU, I would connect the blue wire to an output that supplies 12v when the engine is above cranking speed. So essentially as soon as the engine is at idle or above, the pump will engage.
Here is a pic of it mounted under the guard. I didn't take too many pictures as I wasn't really intending to post. I can take more pics if anyone is interested in a particular area.
Edit:
If you want to delay activation of the second wire so it spools up quickly, this is the kind of thing I used:
Easy to find on ebay for under 10 bucks.
A mate of mine put an astra electric pump in his car and decided to buy me a pump too, so why not I guess.
It's a pretty straightforward install. I mounted mine to the inner guard on the left hand side, ran the hoses through the guard and through the original hose bracket.
I used -6AN teflon hose for the pressure side and -8AN regular line for the return since there's low pressure on that side.
Lowes fabrication in Sydney make a mounting bracket for about $135.
There are 4 wires to operate it.
The two main power/ground wires are 8 gauge. I used an anderson plug (the type used for caravan connections etc) for those two due to the high current here.
The small black wire connects to an ignition source. The blue wire can also connect to this wire, but if both wires are provided power at the same time, the pump takes it's time to spool up.
In the Astra, the blue wire is sent 12v by the ECU once the engine is running. So if you delay putting power on the blue wire for a couple of seconds, the pump spins up instantly.
Because my car is EFI, I connected the black wire to my fuel pump wire, then used a delay circuit to apply power to the blue wire 4 second later. My fuel pump will only run for 2 seconds if the engine dies, so this means that my steering pump also won't run if the engine is not running.
If you're incorporating this into a new EFI build and you have spare outputs on your ECU, I would connect the blue wire to an output that supplies 12v when the engine is above cranking speed. So essentially as soon as the engine is at idle or above, the pump will engage.
Here is a pic of it mounted under the guard. I didn't take too many pictures as I wasn't really intending to post. I can take more pics if anyone is interested in a particular area.
Edit:
If you want to delay activation of the second wire so it spools up quickly, this is the kind of thing I used:
Easy to find on ebay for under 10 bucks.