5spd_xj
<<the good ol days
- Location
- Dracut, MA
Re: THe NAC Lots-O-Post Thread
whoa, thanks for writing a book!
very informative and good to know stuff. basically what I was thinking is to use a stock box/pump, with the fitting drilled and the 4.5" pulley, a cooler and resi, with either 1/4" or 3/8" lines and a 1.5x8x0.75 ram. from what I've read I think something along those lines will work well for me, I'm just paranoid and don't want to be redoing it over 3x before I have V1 working. at that point I might as well have bought pscs kit, which is exactly what im trying to avoid for $$$ reasons
Oh boy...
The pump is the PSC hi-performance TC pump; and yeah I drilled the stock fitting out to 3/16. They give you a AN-fitting to use instead and I'll probably be changing this soon and making a new hose, as even drilled out the stock fitting is one of the last remaining bottlenecks in my system.
Box is completely reworked by PSC. Besides just being fully rebuilt, they install a dual-path spool valve in place of the stock one, and instead of the drilled/tapped 'lower' fitting (the bottom one, if you're looking at the box installed), they drill a new hole up by the valve and braze a hi-flow AN-fitting onto the housing. The dual-path valve then allows two outlets for the fluid, one to the ram and one to the piston in the steering box, so they operate in parallel. The homebrew drill/tap method puts all of the flow through the box first, which is fine for a stock-ish application, but builds up a lot of restriction once you try and flow through it much faster.
Hoses are all 3/8". All -6 AN fittings; no block/brass 90's anywhere. Mandrel-bent 45's off the steering box. I cut and re-welded the ram so the fittings point straight up, and the 3/8" hydraulic hoses run straight into it with no adapters. To improve the bend radius on the hoses I'm gonna swap these for another set of mandrel 45's and adapt the O-ring SAE fittings to AN as well.
Ram is 1.5" bore, 1" shaft, 8" travel. If I had to do it again I might go with a 0.75" shaft instead, just to balance it out a little better, but I don't really notice much of a loss in the retracting force vs. the extending force.
Basically, nearly the best hydro-assist setup you can put together.
Net result is the steering is XXXXing amazing. Even for the tight woods racing and high-speed stuff, it's responsive as hell and I can almost never over-drive it. I like it a ton better than even some of the 'better' full hydro setups I've tried. It might not be the most 'powerful'...but it's good enough IMO; if I can't steer because it's bound up, I probably need to reconsider where I'm at anyway.
Next time I see any of you guys, you're more than welcome to drive it around for a while.
whoa, thanks for writing a book!
very informative and good to know stuff. basically what I was thinking is to use a stock box/pump, with the fitting drilled and the 4.5" pulley, a cooler and resi, with either 1/4" or 3/8" lines and a 1.5x8x0.75 ram. from what I've read I think something along those lines will work well for me, I'm just paranoid and don't want to be redoing it over 3x before I have V1 working. at that point I might as well have bought pscs kit, which is exactly what im trying to avoid for $$$ reasons
)
