Project Chevelle Power Steering Tech Article
Our Project Chevelle is the perfect blank canvas. This Malibu left the assembly line without many of the options you might consider common, even by 1972 standards. Honestly, the car drove really nice compared to what one would think, but the steering ratio was painfully slow! There are many plans for this car and steering quicker is definitely going to be necessary. This gave us the perfect opportunity to showcase exactly what is involved in adding power steering to a car that came with manual steering.
Many cars like our Chevelle were available in a variety of ways, whether that is power or no power steering, disc or drum brakes, different engine options and much more. What this meant for us is not only was there no power steering pump or power box, but we also needed the related brackets, pulleys with additional grooves, pitman arm and a belt. Lucky for us we had everything we needed right here in the Speedway Motors warehouse, so getting the parts together was the easy part.
This conversion is downright easy, and can most definitely be done on a Saturday afternoon in your driveway. We removed the stock steering box and bolted up our new power assisted version in a matter of minutes. After getting the new pump attached to the OEM replacement brackets we had that in place as well. We did need to change the stock water pump pulley due to the fact that it was interfering with our new three groove lower pulley. After getting the power steering hoses on and the reservoir filled with fluid I always like to turn the wheel back and forth with the engine shut off to help get all of the air out of the system. After doing that we fired it up and it was time to go for a drive!
We put together a complete Chevelle Power Steering Conversion Kit with all of the components that we used on this car. It features a remanufactured power steering gearbox, new pitman arm, steering rag joint, remanufactured power steering pump, reproduction power steering brackets, pulleys, hoses and hardware.
Power steering isn’t absolutely necessary for all muscle cars, and quite honestly our Chevelle drove really nice the way it was. Our new power steering box is only 3.25 turns lock to lock, whereas the original manual box was 6.25 turns. At the end of the day this makes for a more safe drive in heavy traffic and much more control at 75mph. In addition to that we have plans to improve the handling with some suspension upgrades, so this will make our car way more fun to drive!