Some may say that power steering is a little overkill for a light weight car like this, but hey the box came with the donor S-10 so why not. Also after driving it in some tight parking lot maneuvers it was very enjoyable to one hand the wheel while shifting with a stick. Getting the box to clear the front radius rods required it to be mounted at quite an angle to the frame and required extensive bracketry design.

(This part drove me nuts for a while) But thanks to the folks at Flaming River who supplied the double cardian U-joint idler bearing and vibration dampening U-joint, We were able to connect to the original steering column, getting the shaft to snake around and under the motor mounts and header. Also, even though they did not list the exact combination of spline count and shaft I needed for the double U-joint, Flaming River put one together and shipped it to me the next day so I could keep on schedule. We noticed that even with the frame rails reinforce for the motor mounts there was still some frame flex while steering. A steering box crossover brace was fabbed from the right hand frame rail which completely eliminated the flexing problem. This was built just like the ones you see on the Jeeps for the same reason.

I would like to thank Kevin Carlson at NAPA in Kingston for the excellent job of building the power steering hoses I needed. I took in a Bent piece of wire with the threaded ends taped in place and he made one up out of industrial rated hydraulic lines and fittings that fit perfectly. Kevin has helped me out many times in cases like this. Like remote mounting my oil filter behind the transfer case with multi-layered stainless steel braided hoses that could be drug over and smashed by rocks and never leak.

Crossmembers

The finished cross members show the front and rear 'A' arm hook ups, just spent a few hours under there putting it all together. Being able to invert the mini started really helped get the solenoid away from the header. We were going to cross brace the cross members but then we decided to just use 3/16" flat plate so that it would work as a heat shield as well for the exhaust system.