The steering rack swap was also a good time to upgrade all the hoses in the system, especially the high
pressure hose, of which the factory version is prone to failure. I modified the factory metal lines by
welding on AN fittings. The lines were subsequently Gold-Cad plated to prevent rusting around the weld
joints. All the lines in the system (including the high pressure side) are AN-6, except for the return
line from the reservoir to the PS pump, which is AN-10. These are all common sizes for a power steering
system.
All the low pressure lines are Goodridge G-Line XF 910 (Aramid) with crimp-on connectors, the (very short) high pressure line is Aeroquip Kevlar braid. The XF 910 is pretty cool stuff, though a bit expensive. But it is incredibly light, and if you were plumbing a whole car with this you would really save some weight, though you'd put a big hole in your wallet too. We'll see about durability. The AN-type hoses required a new power steering fluid reservoir which was sourced from AFCO . |
No power steering system is complete without a cooler, so one of these was plumbed into the return line
from the rack to the reservoir (this is the traditional location for a PS cooler).
The best place to locate the cooler, from the point of view of getting good airflow across it, is up
near the front of the car, in front of, or next to the radiator. However, I wanted to find another
location where cooling airflow would be sufficient, yet there would not be a need to let more
air through the front of the car, or impede the airflow to the radiator.
The location I chose for the cooler is just above the driver's side front control arm "lollipop". There is enough room, there is a good flow of relatively cool air under the car, and the plumbing is fairly convenient. The air will not flow through the cooler in the optimum orientation (i.e. directly through the fins) but convective cooling will still occur. There is the possibility of debris being kicked up from the tire and damaging the cooler, but so far this has not been a problem. The lowest part of the cooler is still above the lowest part of the frame rail. |
The factory power steering high pressure restrictor was not used, nor was a duplicate version plumbed into
the system. There are no apparent down-sides from leaving it out. No increase in noise, and no loss of performance.
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This photo shows the layout of the power steering lines and the power steering reservoir from above.
Note that the stock power steering pump was retained. It is quite light and as long as it provides enough pressure and volume to the rack, I saw no need to swap it out. |
The 1995 E36 M3 steering rack requires spacers in order to fit into the E30 front subframe.
In principle this allows the steering rack to be moved up and down to adjust bump-steer.
Zionsville provides spacers with their conversion kit. I have used these for now, and placed
them above the E36 M3 rack, which puts the center-line of the E36 rack in the same position
as that of the old E30 M3 rack. In the future it might be usefull to make sets of spacers
that allow the rack to be shifted upwards in an effort to improve bump steer.
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