12-0818 Steering

After much reading and studying I quickly discovered that power steering is the way to go. Interestingly the power steering kit offered with the car is electrical not hydraulic. I didn't initially order it but came back after the fact and placed the order through FFR. It arrived this week perfectly in time to get started on it. I had a few couple delays getting started on the steering:

- The passenger side rack and pinion boot had a puncture in it. There is absolutely no way I could have done this damage. I called FFR and they offered no help. They actually said they would look into it and get back to me and then went completely silent. So far my experience with their customer support is batting 0. I tracked this down with the manufacturer Unisteer who said they'd just received some in and would comp me one (well it was slightly more difficult than this but this is where we ended up).

- I purchased the paintable tilt steering column with the original order. This was largely due to the fact that FFR said the placement of the stock column isn't very good and that most people prefer the tilt column. This led me to question why they don't offer this as standard but oh well. The column arrived (a month later) as brushed steel. It actually looks fantastic. I would like to keep it looking brushed which begged the question - do I need to treat it? (Will it rust)? Since it's brushed I would THINK it was intended to look this way and so why would it need treatment... is it stainless? I called FFR and they had no idea "brushed steel" is all the could say. So I called the manufacturer Ididit. There response: "it's brush steel". No one said the magic word stainless so I decided a treatment was in order. I picked up some clear coat spray and proceeded to liberally cover it. Hopefully this will be adequate although, between you and me, I bet it's stainless.

After all this I assembled the steering with not too much difficulty. I had a few tricky parts (fitting the shaft through the firewall mounted bearing) but overall things went smoothly.

Update 9/22/12 - Completed the mounting and wiring of the control box. Picture below.

Update 3/31/13 - I decided to use the coyote headers since they also work on the 4.6L (dual bolt patterns). Unfortunately this also required me to re-locate the steering. I'm really not happy about this since it looks horrible and was a little frustrating to install. The most difficult part was lining up the cross bar clamps so the steering wouldn't bind and then drilling into the cross bars so the bolt could pass into the bar. This is all explained in the coyote instructions.