Reply to "Seeking information concerning installation of EPAS electronic power steering in a Pantera."

Here is the reply I received from Bill Taylor regarding the S2000 steering rack.

"Steve,



I did install a narrowed S2000 power rack and discovered the following problems:



1) 0.75 turns lock-to-lock steering. Sort of like a go-cart. This is caused by the fact the S2000 has very long steering arms (and rack travel to suit those arms) relative to the Pantera (which is about 3.5 turns lock-to-lock ..... much too slow for a sports car).



2) The S2000 is a rack and pinion with a coaxial motor and a separate control box which requires only digital vehicle speed pulses as an input. But the S2000 rack must be shortened by 6 inches to fit the Pantera frame and frame modification to the Pantera to fit the rack are not trivial.



2) Liability. I could just hear a lawyer at the trial after I wrecked a school buss full of handicapped children on the freeway ask, for the benefit of the jury, where I got my mechanical engineering degree and how much experience I had designing steering systems at a major car manufacturer.



I wanted an in-column power assist system, but the only one available at the time was from the Toyota Prius. The Prius system is extremely complicated. It has four digital bus inputs and even if you could sort all the buss interfaces out, it looked too big to fit under the Pantera dash.



A big, expensive, time consuming mistake.



Bill Taylor"


I did a little searching and found Unisteer. This seems like an option that could be mounted on the firewall under the car. Anyone have there car up in the air to look at the measurements? I need to call the company to see if there is an option for speed input.