Mk3 Cavalier Owners Club | Vauxhall Cavalier Dot Com

My power steering pump packed up a couple of years ago and at the time I thought it would be great to just get rid of the pump and go back to a good old manual rack. Other than only driving it 30 miles in the past 3 years when I did I felt like popeye.

So after my brother in law successfully fitted it to his track day GTE, he convinced me to do the same to the cav. So I sourced a corsa C fixed EPAS column

To make the job much easier I am going to remove the dash and at the same time tidy the wiring up behind the dash as you'll see further down the pics it was a mess.



I also have the corsa c mounting plate so I can weld this to the cav plate and have the proper mounting bolts.



Dash removal





Dash out



Huge pile of plastic and leather on the back seat now



Wiring all over the place



And now starting to tidy it up



Next job remove the old column. Hopefully get at that tomorrow.

I'm impressed, wiring behind the dash is a mess though.

Looking forward to seeing the outcome of this.

It should be dead easy i reckon. Cutting the mounting points out of the corsa will make the job much neater too.

Are you gonna fit a Corsa C wheel as the cav one won't fit now, a mk4 astra/mk5 astra/vectra C/Insignia wheel would fit though.
Also the indicator stalk holder is differant on the corsa c column, not sure if the cav stalk holder will bolt on, have you had alook?

Will be a great mod when its done

TurboDan wrote:
Are you gonna fit a Corsa C wheel as the cav one won't fit now, a mk4 astra/mk5 astra/vectra C/Insignia wheel would fit though.
Also the indicator stalk holder is differant on the corsa c column, not sure if the cav stalk holder will bolt on, have you had alook?

I have a Momo steering wheel mounted to a snap off boss. So I've ordered a ektor 1543 steering wheel boss which then just needs the mount holes enlarging from M5 to M6, and then everything just bolts straight on.

Cav indicator stalks will fit, but just need a little trimming to get them to fit.

Not sure if any of you read the forums on astra mk2 site. But here's the link to my brother in laws track car that its already mounted on.

http://www.astra-mk2.com/forum/showthre ... ct/page143

Good work so far Andy. I'll dig the Corsa C steering wheel out so you can use it for mockup to save messing with the Snap-Off boss. Don't forget to take the measurements from the end of the existing column before your remove it. I used around 5 points of reference around the car to get the EPAS column aligned spot on in my GTE before final fitting.

I didnt take any on my nova and regretted it took hours to get it sitting right

Harvey wrote:Good work so far Andy. I'll dig the Corsa C steering wheel out so you can use it for mockup to save messing with the Snap-Off boss. Don't forget to take the measurements from the end of the existing column before your remove it. I used around 5 points of reference around the car to get the EPAS column aligned spot on in my GTE before final fitting.

Thanks for that Harvey. A corsa Steering wheel will make life easier, and good call on the measurements. I'd have forgotten that.

Steering wheel boss arrived this morning to.

Cav.turbo wrote:

TurboDan wrote:
Are you gonna fit a Corsa C wheel as the cav one won't fit now, a mk4 astra/mk5 astra/vectra C/Insignia wheel would fit though.
Also the indicator stalk holder is differant on the corsa c column, not sure if the cav stalk holder will bolt on, have you had alook?

I have a Momo steering wheel mounted to a snap off boss. So I've ordered a ektor 1543 steering wheel boss which then just needs the mount holes enlarging from M5 to M6, and then everything just bolts straight on.

Cav indicator stalks will fit, but just need a little trimming to get them to fit.

Not sure if any of you read the forums on astra mk2 site. But here's the link to my brother in laws track car that its already mounted on.

http://www.astra-mk2.com/forum/showthre ... ct/page143

Sounds like youve got it all under control lol. I wasnt doubting your skills by the way or the fact that your brother has done it before, i was just trying to help out

As you know i was gonna be doing this myself but now i've sold the cav i'm not. I'll be watching this thread though

TurboDan wrote:
Sounds like youve got it all under control lol. I wasnt doubting your skills by the way or the fact that your brother has done it before, i was just trying to help out

As you know i was gonna be doing this myself but now i've sold the cav i'm not. I'll be watching this thread though

Yea no probs Dan. I take all advise or help and use it as best I can. I had thought about a wheel change but like my snap off for security purposes.

You should fit a differant wheel just because you can, i'd go for either a MK4 astra turbo one or a Astra VXR one and wire up the buttons. That'd be cool

Bit more work this morning.

Removed the old column then had the task of fitting a round peg in a square hole. Nothing a file couldn't sort.





Hopefully later I can have a trial fit and what else needs chopping out.

Great mod fella, good progress pics.

Getting closer day by day. With lots of swearing, cutting grinding a bit more swearing its taking shape. Everything is very rough at the minute and will get tidyed up. The timber holding the steering column up I cut for the existing column so I got the correct height with the new column.


Here's the section of the corsa mount I have used





A couple of shots of what I needed to cut out to get it to fit. I did need to cut the end sections of the brake and clutch peddles as well but haven't taken photo's of those yet. I will need to make new brackets to hold the top of the peddles in place as I cut out the original mounting holes.





And a couple of grinding shots my bro in law took while I was working

Nice work. I didnt think you'd have to cut at the pedals though, is it that close?

The fuse box might need some modding too.

TurboDan wrote:Nice work. I didnt think you'd have to cut at the pedals though, is it that close?

The fuse box might need some modding too.

Yea it really is that close to the pedals. It was the same on my bro in laws GTE. He had to trim the ends of the pedals and trim the brackets back.

Once I have it back in place and bolted up I will get a couple of pics of just how close the pedals really are. I don't trust it balanced on the wood to climb under it to take pics.

Fuse box might be ok as it's quite low down. The motor sits quite high.

Small update. Managed to get an hour in the garage earlier before my feet and fingers went dumb with the cold.

I've used the original 4 mounts on the new column to the section of corsa column frame, then added a couple of extra holes and bolted the corsa frame to the cav frame. The height is perfect. Just need to move the column over 5mm so a bit of playing about required.



Here's the top of the brake pedal after a bit of cutting. I need to make a new bracket for this. The clutch pedal is e same



As well as the 2 pedal brackets, it also needs the lower column mount remaking, and I'm then gonna add anger couple of strengthening bars either side as the torque in the column is high and I don't want it ripping out the dash

Just need a good heater in the garage now.

Been a while since the last update but finally had some time to get back to it.

The column is now fitted a wired in. Thanks to my bro in law who sorted the wiring, and his understanding of wiring diagrams it was easier than we first thought. There was only 5 wires required. Constant battery 12v feed, earth, and the following 3 were all available from the main dash plug. Electronic speedo, rev counter, and ignition live.

I got the brackets for the pedals remade as I had to cut out the originals, and a mount at the bottom of the column. It's not possible to get in with the camera at the bottom of the column to show this mount.







The original ignition barrel needed a little modification to get it to fit. The hook at the bottom needed removing





Also got the Ektor boss tapped out from M5 to M6, and the snap off plate mounted



Made a small change to the heater controls while it was out as well, by fitting some white LED's





Thanks for looking

To explain the wiring for the EPAS a little more for you guys I wired up the following.
Blue EPAS chassis plug:
Thick red with in-line 50amp maxi fuse directly to the battery.
Thick brown directly to earth close to the EPAS column.

White EPAS chassis plug:
Thin blue/red to blue/red of dash clocks. This is the speedo feed for the later electric speedos but is fitted to the earlier Cav models with mechanical speedo. The speed feed comes directly from the ABS unit and will already have the correct impulses for the EPAS to control the assistance level depending on speed i.e. full assistance when stationary and less and less assistance the faster you go. For Cav’s not fitted with ABS you will need to use the impulse amp and take a feed directly off a single front ABS sensor. Wiring for the impulse amp is as follows; In1 - abs sensor, In2 - abs sensor,
Out - speed signal to EPAS, 15 - switched ignition 12v+, 31 – Earth. The abs sensor wiring can be wired either way polarity does not matter.
Thin black wire to pin 9 (if my memory serves me correctly, it was 12 hours ago when I did the wiring) of dash clocks as this is a fuse ignition feed for a number of items fitted in the car.
Thin green wire to green wire at dash clocks as the EPAS ECU needs the tacho/rpm feed to know when the car is running as EPAS will only work when the engine is running. This is by design as it sups a lot of current from the battery.
All other wires at the white plug can be cut off or taped back as they are not required. For info they are red/white for body control module (dash light) and brown/white for diagnostics on the Corsa C. For the Corsa B they are black/green to dash light and brown/white for diagnostics.

The summarise the wiring you do not need to buy the ‘box of trick’ to fake the tacho and speed feeds unless you want to specifically fine tune the assistance offered by the EPAS. I have both the ‘box of tricks’ and auto options fitted to my Astra mk2 (switchable) and only use the auto option as it works fine. I get my speed feed directly from the transducer (AK, 16 impulses) that feeds the digi dash. The EPAS expects a 15 impulse feed for the speed signal.

Nice one Harvey. Thanks.

Next job, is to test it and then refit everything.

Popping to the scrappers for you at lunch to collect the missing Corsa C bits that you need to complete the job, column cowling, ignition switch+wiring and the squib. Man I'm so good to you

Did a test today to ensure all wiring was working. Cav started on the 2nd turn of the key after 6 months of sitting in the garage. A bit rattley when it started but it soon started to quite down.

Steering works fine. Spun the steering wheel with one finger and all seemed fine. (Sorry about the wobbley video. It's hard to spin a wheel and hold a camera phone)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v150/ ... 002185.mp4

Looking good!

Now the column is tested and working its time to refit all the dash





Squib fitted. We needed to cut away the plastic plug to get the ektor boss to sit flush with the squib. Only one wires actually needed for the horn.



And after filing the original ignition module down on each side the module lines up with the barrel pin. A couple of tie wraps will hold it in place. It's not under any pressure so no need for anything more robust. We did look at swapping the internals from the corsa unit, but due to it being a can-bus unit and a different size we thought this way would be easier and work just as well.

Coming together well
What's next?

Few more pics of the dash going back together. The corsa cowling needed only a small bit of modifying to get it fitted from the bottom piece. Now I know it fits, I'll get it painted satin black to match the rest of th dash.