some of you may remember this thread, tapping Isuzu box for hydro assist steering , and those at Uwharrie last weekend already got a sneak peak, but i'm here to report my hydraulic assist steering with the stock isuzu power steering box is complete and working.

I'm using a 1.5x8" ram from Scott @ Rockstomper and Matt @ westtexasoffroad did the porting/tapping on my box for the hydro fittings.

Installation



installation was simple and straight forward. ran into a clearance issue between the fitting on the far side of the box and the a/c pully on my 3.2L, but a 90* solved that, just barely. had my share of fun adapting different size hydro fittings, and stopping leaks, but that goes to say with any hydro project.

I decided to mount the ram to my diff cover via some custom made bracketry. For anyone who's seen an OX diff cover, they are quite stout and 1/4" at their thinnest point, so it seemed a logical choice for mounting.





The ram has an 8" stroke. With my tie rod moved to forward most holes on my hi-steer arms, my steering strokes slightly over 8"s. So i had to adjust out my steering stops and loose a little bit of turning radius, but so far it doesn't seem too bad.

Street-ability
I would say changed slightly for the worse. the ram gives more feedback from the smaller bumps than my dual steering stabilzers did. large bumps at speed can be a tad scary as there is a noticable lag in the ram catching up. going to a 2" bore ram with the isuzu steering setup would be almost unstreetable IMO.

Offroad
This is where the mod truely pays off, can't tell you how awesome and for the better this has made the rodeo. I can now turn the steering lock to lock, standing still, locker engaged, with one hand... before, this was a forarm pumping exercise, if possible at all. with the locker engaged, forget turning without throttle... not so anymore. Another thing i love is it keeps the 36" tires more under control on the uneven offroad terrain. before hydro, it didn't take much to grab the steering out of my hand and this lead to a few odd circumstances at times. Now, the ram keeps the steering right where i want it when in the rocks and dirt.

more picts can be seen on my website
here

-Rob