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

Nope, i have hydro assist across the full 8" of my stroke. But again, because of my tie rod positioning, my stroke was slightly more to begin with, so i had to adjust the steering stops to not bottom out my ram.

-Rob

Before the incident with clearance <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/shiner.gif" alt="" /> the steering worked great for him from a bystanders position he had 1
hand on the steering wheel and made the obsticales (to us little people anyways)look way to easy <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/bird.gif" alt="" /> .Good job and my hats off to you and your crew for getting the jeep back on the road. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/kewl.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/cheers.gif" alt="" />
Doug

For those that weren't at Uwharrie, i finished up the final touches of the hydro assist project fri, the same day i was to take off for Uwharrie. I was looking forward to testing the setup on the trail that weekend... the hour drive down there went fairly uneventful. during a night run friday, things were working wonderfully for the first time on the trail until i dropped off a substantial ledge, my springs compressed to my bumpstops and i felt my steering getting harder. Upon inspection, i sheared off one of the 90* fitting on the ram by compressing it up into the oil filter housing.

After getting it back to camp, i was able to screw the hose directly into the ram (no 90* fitting) and continue on for the weekend with bumpstop extensions.

The solution? well, the 90* fittings provided to me by Rockstomper are quite tall. I'll be looking for lower profile 90* fittings and making some slight adjustments on the ram positioning and all should be fine.

nothing goes off without a hitch i suppose! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/evil.gif" alt="" />

-Rob

RobG , you're using the Ford TRE on your pitman now? Does that work better than the Hiem joints you had? Do you recall what Thread that is?

- Ryan

The thread is a 7/8-18, kinda an odd ball size as far as threads go, but same as 1-ton GM TRE.

I do like the Ford TRE better. I was originaly running a 5/8 x 3/4 SRE and drilled out the taper in the arm. but the wide part of the taper is bigger than 5/8", so i was only getting about half of the surface contact through the arm. The TRE gives me more contact area for more piece of mind and less play i believe. The misalignment on the SRE i used was about 23* and the Ford TRE seems to give aprox. the same max working angle. I'm still running SRE's on the tie rod, but since switching to TRE's on the drag link, my steering seems firmer. I'll probably evidentally switch the tie rod to TRE's too.

-Rob

Rob, i just wanna say one thing, IT's ALL YOUR FAULT (my whole swap & everything else connected to it) <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/bird.gif" alt="" />.

After seeing your truck for the first time (in april) i became upsessed <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/evil.gif" alt="" />. I wanted to get to being at least close to you'r heigt (but still keeping the IFS, i know stupid desicion but i'm sticking to it).
And now you put a hydro-assist on it <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/angry.gif" alt="" />.

All the jokes aside, YOU RULE . <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/kewl.gif" alt="" />

rubo

P.S. I appologiase for all the mistakes i made above, hope you can still understand what i'm trying to say.

Sorry to get off topic of the Hyrdo .. but thats good to know since I just ordered a Drag Link for my Ford TRE and the GM TRE and I looked at them and determined myself that it was the same threads (besides left and right of course) but when I got the drag link back the GM side is firm but on the Ford TRE end it WIGGLES when it's threaded in .. you can wiggle it back and worth even with an inch+ of it threaded in.

Any Ideas?

what wiggles? the tapered part of the TRE? or the threaded part? no, i have no movement issues with mine.

-Rob

Yep. Left-hand 7/8-18.

The TRE threads wiggle in the bore of the draglink. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" /> Pretty odd... The taper itself is a good fit -- in other words, the TRE is within spec, but the draglink is out-of-spec.

The threads look well-formed... I was thinking perhaps the bore was over-drilled and the TRE threads were tapped into the ID with full roots, but flattened caps, but they really do look and feel fine. I suggested that Ryan send it back to Scott for him to check, and re-cut. Matt may have a threaded bung that Ryan could have welded in, but I personally prefer having the threads formed in instead of having them welded in. Both have proven to work well, I just like the former.

Randii