Corsa EPAS

[Andrew Cooke]

Has anyone here had a play with Electric Power Steering, or know of any good technical links?

I've got a Corsa C colum coming to have a play with. It seems like it just needs a rpm pulse to keep it alive, and a speed pulse to set the assistance. I've seen that you can buy a box for ~£40 that can do this, but I was more interested in what the signals might be. Have you seen any tests on the level of assistance given? Or any access to the diagnostics - is it serial, or CAN?

cheers,
Andy

[Sparkie]

ive only ever messed with the epas on VAG group stuff. - that is definately CAN, cos you have to code the new one in with a 5 digit code, telling you where the car was made, has it got ABS, and interestingly how hard you want the steering to be - there is a disabled option for VERY light steering.

[Andrew Cooke]

I found some vaguely technical info.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/42458893/PDF-epas

[Andrew Cooke]

I bought a doohicky off Ebay to fool the steering controller into thinking it was on a car. I've just stuck it on a scope to see what the signals look like:

RPM ~280Hz 12V square wave
Speed 10-4400Hz 12V square wave, adjustable

Hopefully that will allow me to get the thing running and see what sort of assistance curves the rack offers. Time for me to build a new test fixture

[Dave Reed]

This is somthing we are using on the new car me and my dad are building..

We just bought the 'box of tricks' (basically a potentiometer) from some (can't remember the name now) electronics company, we plan to just adjust it as required.

[Trevhib]

Is this intended for the 5, Twingo or other motor?

[Andrew Cooke]

Is this intended for the 5, Twingo or other motor?

5

maybe...

[Andrew Cooke]

This is somthing we are using on the new car me and my dad are building..

We just bought the 'box of tricks' (basically a potentiometer) from some (can't remember the name now) electronics company, we plan to just adjust it as required.

please share your experiances on this thread

hopefully something useful will drop out my measurements.

[Dave Reed]

please share your experiances on this thread

hopefully something useful will drop out my measurements.

Well I've seen and felt one fitted to a Mk1 cossie powered escort and it worked very well.. You could turn it off completly and it would feel like a normal car without power streering.. Turn it on, adjust to what feels right and of you go..

I will say though, that my mate reckons that for drag racing he just turns it off..

All the above is probably no use to you at all mind

What exactly do you want to know about? It's a very common thing that alot of people use to convert to power steering.

I just remembered the name of the company & a quick goole search brought this up;

http://www.wiringlooms.com/EPAS.aspx

DC electronics