Some good news and some bad news.

I got all the computer parts in and assembled everything and it worked like a champ! Then I went and tried to update the BIOS and it didn't take and it was black screen of death from there on out. Motherboard is currently in transit for repairs, so likely two weeks out and two weeks back best case scenario.

Other than that, I finally decided on a ram and went with the Trail Gear Rock Assault HD ram. After seriously trying to get the surplus center ram to work out, I decided it wasn't worth the headache and went with the TG ram. I ordered the heim joints and tube adapters for it as well. I went with QA1 rod ends, PN HMR12HT and HML12HT. They are 3/4" hole x 3/4-16 threads and static rated at 52,900 lbs.




Here's the tube adapters:



On the rest of the steering, I went round and round(and round) with the pump and Orbitrol selection. I am thinking about ditching the KRC pump and going with an actual hydraulic pump. These pumps are used in industrial settings and can push out significantly more pressure and volume than an automotive power steering pump. They also run cooler and last longer. There are however several issues with fitment. They are a bit larger and they aren't designed for over hung loads. In other words, they can't take forces from the side (like a belt driving a pulley for instance). So we need an intermediate bearing and it has to be supported. I think this can be easily done with a simple pressed on bearing into a thick aluminum plate. The pump would bolt into the plate and the protruding shaft, now supported, would be easy to throw a pulley on. The next problem is mounting them. They are closer to the size of an alternator or A/C compressor than they are to a power steering pump. I can relocate my current A/C pump up high and to the passengers side with a relocation bracket and run the industrial pump in it's place. Why not just run the industrial pump up there you ask? Couple reasons.

-Putting the hyd. pump down low allows gravity to help keep it fed.
-It puts the pump(remember, the high pressure part) further away from the cab
-The hyd. pump has no electronics(unlike the A/C pump) and so if it gets submerged, no one cares
-The hyd. pump is noisy, so now we have it down low and away from the cab
-And most importantly, it allows us to use the A/C portion of the crank pulley. The crank pulley has two drive sections. One for the A/C, and one for literally everything else. The hyd. pump draws a lot of horsepower, especially at high rpms. Having it hooked up with everything else is a recipe for trouble. This layout isolates it and gives it it's own dedicated belt.


The Orbitrol is a tricky one too. Probably the trickiest part of the whole system. There are a blinding array of options out there and to make matters worse, choosing one option changes or negates others. The orbital is the "steering box" of the system and so out of everything, we want it to work, and work well. One of the main reasons I was pushed away from sticking with the KRC pump was that even maxed out, it only put out 1650 PSI and barely 3 gallons per minute of flow. To simplify things, the psi is how hard you can make the ram(and by extension, the wheels) push. You can literally knock boulders over with one finger with full hydraulic steering. The gallons per minute(gpm) rating is how much flow you can push through your ram. This is important for steering response. When we try and turn the wheel fast (like in a dangerous situation) we want the pump to be able to keep up. As the ram sizes go up (mine is one of the larger ones) this becomes more important. The gear driven pumps put out serious psi and flow. They start around 3000 psi and can flow up to 10 times the flow of the KRC pump. We don't need anywhere near that much flow, but what we do need is enough flow to be able to run a "proper" Orbitrol". Remember earlier how I said some options wouldn't allow others? Well it turns out the low flow and psi of the KRC pump was significantly limiting my options for the Orbitrol. One of the cooler options available is dual rate steering. You basically flip a switch and your steering goes from 5 or 6 turns lock to lock(like stock steering, and less twitchy at speed) to 2 turns lock to lock, which is great for slow speed response and doing technical stuff in the rocks. It turns out most the the safety features are only available on the higher flowing, higher pressure models as well.