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Obviously few here have a clue about Electric Steering vs electric assisted steering. The pics shown are assisted steering and it's not even close to Electric Steering as there is NO STEERING COLUMN.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TrapperL
Obviously few here have a clue about Electric Steering vs electric assisted steering. The pics shown are assisted steering and it's not even close to Electric Steering as there is NO STEERING COLUMN.
You're thinking steer-by-wire: also electric but no steering column or other physical connection between driver and steering rack. The majority of EPS still has a column between the steering wheel and the rack, with an electric motor on the column. I drive such a car: a 2015 Hyndai Elantra.
The vast majority of drivers cannot feel the difference between the two. I know I can't, and I've been driving for 50 years. Two of my vehicles are electric, one is hydraulic.
Electric power steering has been around a long time,it is used in the electric Hilo's like those manups that big warehouses use. I've driven many electric power steering Hilo and electric steering cars are no different, imo. Saab used electric power steering long time ago this is how GM started out useing in when they owned Saab the avalanche and Malibu were some of the first GM vehicles to have the electric power steering.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by easy62
Electric power steering has been around a long time,it is used in the electric Hilo's like those manups that big warehouses use. I've driven many electric power steering Hilo and electric steering cars are no different, imo. Saab used electric power steering long time ago this is how GM started out useing in when they owned Saab the avalanche and Malibu were some of the first GM vehicles to have the electric power steering.
I unknowingly leased(rather than bought) a 2005 Malibu that year, and it was the worst driving experience of any car I drove! I was constantly turning the wheel trying to find center, and the car had a pull to the left that no alignment or body shop could diagnose. A pull to the right I could deal with, as we do drive on the right in this country, following the road crown.
GM EPS has indeed improved immensely since then, with a feel 'closer to hydraulic' now, albeit very light in parking lots. Which is only where power steering is needed in the first place. I drove my Aunts and Uncles 2014 Cruze and Malibu, far more car-like than that 2005 disaster.
If 2004 was GM's first year with EPS in select models, 2011 was the same growing pain for Hyundai. Their Elantra and Sonata redesigns were stunning to me, so aerodynamic outside and futuristic inside. But it took three more years to figure out why their cars could not go straight, especially Sonata. Dealer service advisors gave customers the Rumsfeld-spiel, "It's Electric Power Steering, you'll get used to it". There was also a steering coupler replacement campaign, which did more to eliminate clunking in the steering column than anything to do with the constant wandering. The problem quietly went away for model year 2015, with a redesigned Sonata and a revised MDPS motor in both it and Elantra. Few driver complaints since.
There is a growing curve to EPS, as indicated by the above examples of two manufacturers from different countries. Now the concentration should be on the feel, and on not engineering so much assist into the things that they feel like video games, or at least, do what Sonata and Elantra started in 2014: Offer a driver-selectable steering mode. Comfort(hyperboosted), Normal, and Sport/Heavy(reduced boost). It's a small button on either the steering hub or the dash.
The dinky little 2015 Nissan Note I drive as an insurance rental last year had surprisingly good steering: not BMW(!), but again, light at low speed, and then progressively heavier and quite predictable above 30mph, with decent road-feel. It actually steered better than Nissan's bring-home-the-bacon Altima! If they could do EPS right in a Versa, they can damn well accomplish the same thing in bigger cars. Come on!
Last edited by TheGrandK-Man; 08-03-2017 at 05:52 AM..
Folks: Read up on wheel offset and 'scrub radius'. Both have at least as much to do with road feel as does power steering assist. I'll give you this Easter Egg: One type of scrub radius increases road feel, the other reduces it. Look the rest up.
Scrub radius only becomes a factor when you go throwing big wide tires on a lifted truck or low pro wide tires on a car/lowered truck.
I love when know it alls throw lifts on trucks and say death wobble is a factor that can't be fixed...
Toe the front wheels in slightly more than what the machine says is spec, adjust the drag link to re-enter the steering wheel, go 80-90mph no death wobble. Unless you've got spanked ball joints pitman idler inner outer tie rods... then yes.
When other techs say it can't be fixed I'll fix it. You never set the specs back to factory angles when you throw big wide tires on. Leave the camber at factory specs, tires will wear like a cheese wedge. In NY NAPA loved me, I was constantly buying camber and caster slugs for super duties after throwing in lift kits and big wide tires. Chevy 3/4 1 tons were a PITA with camber cams...
Might take 3 hours to do, but I guarantee when I'm done your lifted rig will track straight as an arrow, have no death wobble at speed, and steering wheel will return to dead center after turning.
Rack and pinion 150s with strut spacers would have worn inner tie rods inside 1 year after a lift and big wide tires. Those lifts are chintzy. Was never a fan of those. Especially with the vacuum hoses going to the IWEs being fully stretched brake hoses stretched and CV axles at near 45° angles...
You remove the power steering pump which requires crankshaft HP to turn.
In the case of trucks, it's dumb, put a snow plow on an EPS it kills it.
When doing brakes, we learned with the F150 when the front rotors would seize onto the hubs you didn't pound them off with a hammer. That kills EPS racks dead.
Had to crack the hat hitting vertically downwards to get them off. Would it have killed fomoco to apply anti seize to the backs of the hats?
They're much more expensive and act as programmable module installation when you replace them. They're not really customer wallet friendly... and they don't like big wide tires either... my problem with them is the connectors being placed where road salt can get in and corrode them. I like hydraulic assist.
If I were to design EPAS what I would have done differently instead of having the rack be redesigned, I'd put an electric motor to drive ALL of the engine mounted accessories. Have it turn at a constant RPM. Get the same steering feel, the same AC compressor operation. And not have to have a PMI steering racks with a CAN network to column steering angle sensors etc...
The idea was to free up HP and reduce fuel consumption...
To me HPS gives a lot better connection/feeling to the car & road and I find hard to buy the new BMW's with EPS (done to please the less demanding "fashion/name tag" drivers) when older HPS are much better.
No it wasn't, it was done to please the regulators who are demanding that manufacturers squeeze every last bit of fuel economy out of their cars. It's not just BMW or other high-end marques using it, EPS is being phased in across the industry because EPS produces less parasitic loss than HPS does.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by NY_refugee87
EPS is an ok idea on paper...
You remove the power steering pump which requires crankshaft HP to turn.
In the case of trucks, it's dumb, put a snow plow on an EPS it kills it.
When doing brakes, we learned with the F150 when the front rotors would seize onto the hubs you didn't pound them off with a hammer. That kills EPS racks dead.
Had to crack the hat hitting vertically downwards to get them off. Would it have killed fomoco to apply anti seize to the backs of the hats?
They're much more expensive and act as programmable module installation when you replace them. They're not really customer wallet friendly... and they don't like big wide tires either... my problem with them is the connectors being placed where road salt can get in and corrode them. I like hydraulic assist.
If I were to design EPAS what I would have done differently instead of having the rack be redesigned, I'd put an electric motor to drive ALL of the engine mounted accessories. Have it turn at a constant RPM. Get the same steering feel, the same AC compressor operation. And not have to have a PMI steering racks with a CAN network to column steering angle sensors etc...
The idea was to free up HP and reduce fuel consumption...
Frankly I could care less which type of steering my ride has, as long as it has some weight in the turns, centers quickly, and transmits to me at least an iota of what I'm driving on. I was just explaining what went wrong in EPS's early years, and suggest what mfgs could do to improve the driveability of vehicles equipped with it.
Last edited by TheGrandK-Man; 08-03-2017 at 08:05 AM..
by the very definition of an electrical motor (rotor spinning inside stator due to electro-magnetic force) there is no touching, physical (as in mechanical forces) connection.
Hence the disconnect or lack of mechanical feeling in the steering.
I would not purchase a "performance car" with electrical steering.
Well, they pretty much all have gone electric. 911 has EPS nowdays...
I personally was shocked, when I first drove the F30 3 series..
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There was also a steering coupler replacement campaign, which did more to eliminate clunking in the steering column than anything to do with the constant wandering. The problem quietly went away for model year 2015, with a redesigned Sonata and a revised MDPS motor in both it and Elantra. Few driver complaints since.
