99SH, there is a very true saying that goes, "the fasted way to move water is to give a frightened deck hand, on a sinking boat, a bucket".

Believe me, if you need to turn the wheel in a hurry, you'll find the strength. Even this old bloke has no trouble driving my non power steer Triumphs from the 70/80s

The fact that many people found the strength to drive much heavier cars with out any power steering for about a hundred years may convince you.

If not, I'll introduce you to my daughter. She has a 5 ton, non power steering truck, which carries her show jumpers all over the country. No she's not a gorilla. In fact she is 5Ft 2, 98 Lbs, 27 years old, & been using that truck for 5 years. She also gallops half ton horses all over the place, jumping fences you cant see over along the way. She's strong enough to make them do what they are told too.

 

I always wondered why I never had a problem with steering feel. I did this naturally, fluky me

 

I've been driving without EPS for nearly 2 years (street and track) and I love it. You get use to it fast and the difference in feedback is IMMENSE. You can feel the variation in pneumatic torque as you progress through the tires slip angle and up to the limit (where the torque drops and levels out).

Here's a video of me at a VIR HPDE. I'm not "death gripping" the wheel, I have very vainy hands. You can see the amount of feedback (impulses/jerks) and increase in effort but its worth it. I reinstalled the EPS system the other day, just for kicks, and I hated it. Went right back. I may experiment next time at the track and compare track times.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1MYf_6sIxs

 

what a cool data layout over the video.
how do yo do it?

 

It's just a switch. If you install it properly, the average person would never even know it's not OEM.

I took a girl out a few weeks ago in my S13. She was not feelin' it at first, I could definitely tell. Once I explained why it rode so stiff and why I didn't have a hood on it, she was still kinda "meh" about it. So I showed her some drift videos and explained THAT'S why the suspension is stiff. She thought it was really cool after that haha. The lack of hood was still not very cool, but oh well. I didn't have anyone to help me put it back on and I happen to think a fully tucked, stitch welded engine bay w/ custom paint and a custom painted block/head + polished valve cover looks awesome
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Agreed, you could make an EPS on/off switch look OEM or you could hide it. Either way would be fine.

B.T.W. That's a great story! I lol'd. A true car nerd, you sir, are.
It reminded me of the video where the clueless playboy model trashes the manual transmission of an expensive drift car.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSYigy-F1fk

P.S. you're lucky to know a girl that actually gives a shit about your car. The girls I know, the only thing they know about cars is whether or not it has a Mercedes Benz emblem on the hood!
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Wow, I'm going to have to watch that video tonight when I get home. No sound here @ work and that's definitely one that needs sound to be enjoyed!! I've had soooo many instances like the one I described above. I picked a girl up once in my old EG Civic, and didn't know she had a gravel driveway until I got there. fml that was awful. I had just installed coilovers. That was the worst 1/8th mile of my life. Things do get mighty bouncy with high spring rates + gravel, though... If you're pickin' up what I'm puttin' down lol

Or the time I took a girl out in my Jeep... 35" tires... 4'11" girl... Not a great combo. I offered to buy a step stool before we went out again. She didn't like that. I was just trying to be nice

Think I'm going to disagree. Anything over 10-15 miles an hour should be sufficient to react in an emergency. Simular cars I've had to the S ( TR4 ,.Nissan Fairlady 2 seater) didn't have PS and kinda interesting that Honda felt this feature was necessary in an S2000.
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I've owned 2 Civics without power steering, and the only time I had problems was parking lots. Even then, it just means you gotta think things through so you don't end up having to turn the wheel while you're not moving or when you're moving under 5mph.

 

I record the data using a Race Technology DL1 data logger and then overlay the video with the data using Dashware (http://www.dashware.net/). Dashware is only $50 and it's fantastic, very versatile.

 

I wonder if you could put a variable resistor somewhere so that the EPS strength is controlled by a knob rather than a on/off switch?

Maybe a simple controller could be made that takes the speed sensor as input and smoothly fades out power with speed.

Problem is making something that is utterly reliable... as you don't want anything related to EPS to suddenly become ON or Off.

 

So i did this last night... one thing. I saw the "I turned the car off and pulled the fuse" line and went wait, what? Not disconnect power? OK.

... 30 seconds later, i was breaking the tackweld between the screwdriver and hood damper. Disconnect the battery if you do this, guys.


That said, my review largely jives with the OP except for one thing- You're trading dead feeling for excessive weight below 20mph. Precision in lowspeed corners goes right out the window. It's not that i'm unused to manual steering. I've had manual steering cars at pretty much all points in the last 10 years... it's that this car doesn't handle it well in my opinion and feels like a HPS rack with fluid in it still.

My Elise was manual steering, and awesome.
My Miata was depowered, and about like this. I then pulled the hydro piston from inside the rack and it got markedly better.

I find myself curious how this setup would feel without the electric motor drag on it... it might get better. EPS isn't electro-hydraulic, right? It's pure electric?

For me, i'm going back to EPS, the tradeoff at low speed in precision isn't worth the feedback i get through the wheel. Man did i like having that weight in the wheel though!

 

Pure electric afaik.
Say someone did figure out how to wire up the speed sensor to fade out the EPS power within the speed range 0-20mph. What happens to steering if you're moving on a corner at say 5 mph and speed up to 25mph? the change in feel might make the whole thing a tad unpredictable, so maybe not a good idea after all.

 

Nice vid! I'm also curious how EPS affects track times!