Hydro Steering (1 Viewer)

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My next truck will get that funky ultra 4 style hydro assist with the manual box, and double ended ram as a tie rod. I posted a link to it a few pages down from here. I have only driven heavy equipment and aircraft tugs that had full hydro and i can see where it would get annoying at speed quickly. However it was on old ass equipment that was 20yrs past the end of its usefull life cycle and had a crew of drunk and stoned college kids maintaining it.
 
I wasn't trying to pit us one against another.
I value the opinions of all in this group and most certainly am not an authority on most things. As well I have no where near the knowledge of a Joe Z. Or a John G. Or a Hoff _. Or a Bry K. Or just about anyone else for that matter.
I was just so overwhelmed by all the actual tech going on here I got excited.
I'll just stick to stupid comments and dick jokes from this point the forward.
 
tonyota said:
I wasn't trying to pit us one against another.
I value the opinions of all in this group and most certainly am not an authority on most things. As well I have no where near the knowledge of a Joe Z. Or a John G. Or a Hoff _. Or a Bry K. Or just about anyone else for that matter.
I was just so overwhelmed by all the actual tech going on here I got excited.
I'll just stick to stupid comments and dick jokes from this point the forward.
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You built a truck damn near from the ground up in like 3 weeks with multiple parts of your body fxxxed up, you are damn near a toyota master!! You are at minumum above me, i cut a bunch of s*** apart and bogger welded it together and it somehow hasnt fallen apart yet!
 
Yea, sorry guys. Didn't realize the implications of actually talking tech! :D

Hoff, great video. Thx.

Tony, you're a bona-fide toyota master after your mini build.

Joe, Thanks for that info. That's been what I've been thinking as I'm continuing research. I would love an opportunity to try something with full hydro before going into this but not sure if that's possible.

My thoughts were setting up a system that would be around 3.5 turns lock to lock and allow speeds of about 2 turns per second so it would retain functionality close to how factory steering would move.

From what I've read, the negatives of the hydro are going to be that the steering wheel probably won't stay centered as I'm driving it, there will be a reduction in feedback, and it might feel more vague on street driving. Is this what you're thinking as well? I'm still trying to understand the specific feelings or actions of the system that would "wear me out" over a days use.

Thanks for everyone's input. Seriously appreciated. And sorry its tech :)
 
Oh and I'd like to 3 link the front eventually. So, that's my thoughts around this build. If that means anything at this point.
 
The thing that would wear me out was driving straight. The wheel always seemed to be drifitng and the vehicles tended to wander. When menuvering nothing beat it, it turned no matter what was in the way, then again that could also be a bad thing lol. Again this was on heavy equipment (front end loaders, snow clearning equipment) and electric tractors made to tow airplanes with full hydro rear steer.
 
I'll throw my zero first hand experience based on web wheeling and my 8 years with assist.

Full hydro comes with a lot of stigmas after 15 years of evolution in rock crawling, where manners during a 5 minute course didn't matter. Now with all the high speed solid axle stuff out there there is a lot of advancement and it seems to be slowly trickling down. I would be willing to bet the latest and greatest systems are pretty damn nice and getting nicer and cheaper by the day (the jk crowd has been a carrot sought by all aftermarket's and it helps all of us).

Having not wheeled full hydro i can guess that what gets "old" is having to constantly monitor the wheel. Even in turns, where you could simply let go with traditional steering and grab the wheel where you want it, you now have to turn the wheel back to center. I imagine it's like doing twice the work. Plus, I can imagine the total lack of feedback or feel in full hydro also takes some fun out of it.

But, I know solving these issues (plus high speed twitchyness) has been driving innovation (and Ultra 4), and from what I hear the new systems are waaaay better than they were just a few years ago.

I don't know what you should do. I don't like knowing that if I lose my motor I lose my steering (how do the stick shift guys do it?). But on the other hand I would love to run full hydro and if I had to start over probably would... but mostly because I'd already be running full hydro in the rear ;)
 
Thanks for the input J-dawg(not sure why I typed that). According to Eaton (the orbital valve manufacturer) you won't lose all steering if the motor goes out, it just becomes very hard to steer. Akin to losing power steering in a parking lot; but it will still turn the wheels without the motor running. So that's good. The systems do have a return to center function as well so the wheel will start to move back to center, however not as quickly as a regular set up w steering column. It's part of the load reactive features that are on the valve. Steering out of a turn will still be required which I'm sure can get old. From what basic math I've done, flow rates from the PSC P-Pump, Orbital valve and 10" ram it would give me approximately 3.2 turns lock to lock which I think would be quite manageable for both rocks and trail/street.

Spoke with someone from PSC today... 3 phone calls and two messages to get a hold of someone who sounded like he'd never operated a vehicle with any sort of hydro steering and didn't really know what he was saying. So... that didn't help at all.

I'ma keep searching and reading on pirate. Seems to be a plethora of info, just harder to decipher. Let's continue this discussion at Thursday night din din. I got all sorts of things to talk about.
 
I would be curious to see how the newer systems steer without power to the pump. When we had to recover dead equipment it would "steer" but the wheel would barely move and you would need damn near all your body weight to move the wheel; you would get maybe a quarter turn before it felt like it locked up and you needed to pause to bleed the pressure off. Holy run on sentence....

Saying that when my motor was stalling at hoedown going down hills i lost damn near all steering each time and was about on par with what i remember from the dead full hydro systems.
 
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Yea, that's something I'm curious about as well. The actual force needed to keep steering. Realistically though, I think I would know what's happening and that something isn't right before everything goes to complete off. The chances of everything failing all at once would be extremely slim. But hey, s*** happens.
 
SO.... thoughts on replacing the steering stabilizer with a ram for assist?
 
pics?

Doubt it. Could work as long you remake/upgrade the brackets. This is assuming the stabilized is mounted to the axle and then the tie rod. Not frame and tie rod or drag link.

If its mounted to the frame, while the suspension is flexed the ram will find itself applying more of a perpendicular force on the steering link. The geometry of a ram (maintaining as parallel as possible alignment) is much more important than a stabilizer.
 
Makes sense. I'll check but your doubts are well within reason. Just shooting from the hip because I saw a $69.99 hydro ram at farm and fleet.
 
Just keep in mind that using an odd ball ram, you will need to determine bushing size to tune the flow rate to the ram so that it moves at the same speed as the rest of the steering system. The marlin/surplus center setup I run, the bushing sizes was already figured. PSC and HOWE will also have already accounted for that.

Zach runs that agricultural ram for full hydro, maybe he knows how to set up the flow.
 
4rnr said:
Just keep in mind that using an odd ball ram, you will need to determine bushing size to tune the flow rate to the ram so that it moves at the same speed as the rest of the steering system. The marlin/surplus center setup I run, the bushing sizes was already figured. PSC and HOWE will also have already accounted for that.

Zach runs that agricultural ram for full hydro, maybe he knows how to set up the flow.
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Zach's is easy. It's 100% John deere parts, It was all already matched to each other.

Bryan, I thought about assist in that same spot, but am worried about addedstress on the already weak sector shaft.
 
Yea, I haven't looked at it since I had my original brain fart but I was thinking about that. Puts it at an angle and would be stressing some parts that I doubt were designed to have anywhere near that stress on them.
 
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