continued from above
The guts were removed and the shuttle valve was modified to work without hydraulic assist. The "power assist" will be upstream inside the column. The interior cavities of the rack were filled with grease and the pressure and return hose ports were capped.
New inner+outer tie rods were ordered and installed, as were a new set of steering rack bellows and rubber caps. The rack was tidied up and reinstalled into the subframe.
People that have seen the picture above left have asked "Is it in the way of your feet?" The answer is no. The picture above right shows the EPAS motor buried up under the dash. It will be all but invisible - to the eye and with respect to steering feel - once the dash is back in place and the car is on the road.
OBP PEDAL BOX ASSEMBLY
This is the last section for this update - the OBP pedal box. Early in the build we had decided on the EPAS steering and Ryan felt that the motor might be difficult to package under the dash using the stock pedal box, which is hung from the firewall and the dash mounting structure.
We also decided to gut the inner workings from behind the dash skin and go with an digital dash display and custom HVAC (Motorsport heater core/blower) to save weight. This meant the heavy, clunky OEM dash bar would go away and be replaced with a horizontal cage bar, to which we could mount the steering column and possibly the pedals.
Instead of a set of traditional "hung" pedals the packaging of the EPAS and other bits dictated a floor mount set of pedals. And instead of building this from scratch we chose this kit from OBP. It comes with a mounting plate, spots for all 3 pedals and 3 brake master cylinder mounts, and it has a balance bar.
Due to some changes to the floor structure, seat location, and other tweaks we have made, the pedal box bracket needed to be tweaked a bit to fit the contours of the remaining section of floor.
But with very little rework this OBP kit bolted into the chassis and gave plenty of room above for the EPAS and other dash bits.
WHAT'S NEXT?
There's still plenty of work to show before we are "caught up to real time". Custom fuel cell + fuel fill + enclosure, oil tank + enclosure, carbon hood and 1M front bumper cover install, and much more. And flares.
Until next time,