Step-by-Step KRX Electronic Power Steering Upgrade

Hey what's going on guys Jake with slick Rock and behind me here is my Kawasaki KRX so we've been doing upgrades over the years and stuff just everything that we'd run into we like beefing it up making a little bit better these machines have been an absolute blast to rock crawl in so we just keep making little tweaks trying to make it better I just got it back from vet Racing for a little cage upgrade and some rock sliders a little bit of EXO and next thing we're going to dive into issue that we've been having obviously when you're running 37 inch tires four inch portals the biggest complaint is steering so when we are crawling and we put this into four-wheel locked you're basically going straight you you get to go in a straight line at that point not getting much help from power steering so that's the project I got the dash taken apart and we're going to be replacing the EPS system so the electronic power steering we are going to be replacing it with super ATVs easy steer their new series six 600 watt power steering system so as you can see it's made for massive rides I think this qualifies perfect for rock crime mud bogging perfect what I'm really really looking forward to is they claim that it amplifies steering up to five times which is desperately needed in this like I said when we are in four wheel drive four-wheel drive locked in these things you're basically going in a straight line so we're going to start getting into this first thing I got to do is get this motor out and let's get into it good all right to get the upper shaft disconnected from the EPS system there was one two two bolts on the top side of the EPS motor and one bolt on the top of the lower shaft once you get those off um the very upper shaft go into the steering wheel has two rubber boots to remove those and there are two c-clips holding the shaft in so once you get those seat Clips off you can pull the shaft up which allows you to get the upper shaft off all right one thing's become very apparent in this video I'm going to be using the word shaft quite a bit let's get our laughs out get the giggles out and let's get through this install all right so as you can see here I've got the upper shaft disconnected and I haven't been able to get the lower shaft off what I'm hoping is once I remove the EPS mounting bolts the three bolts that are holding that in that I'll be able to lift it up and get that lower shaft out so also there are as you can see in here three connectors that go on one hair one on the side and then there's one off this back side that you need to disconnect before removing all right so without a doubt the worst part is getting the lower shaft off the EPS unit now the easiest solution would be is completely loosen the rack and let the rack drop down so you can get that shaft off I didn't want to go to that effort right now because it requires removing a winch moving the front diff forward so we're going to get into that project here a little bit because we actually do have the Super ATV rack boss 2.0 going in which I'm really excited about so that combination with the 600 watt motor should be um freaking sweet so what I ended up doing is just using some pry bars and with the movement of the motor back up in here I was able to get the shaft off of the steering rack so now I just got to keep trying to finagle to get that off once that's loose I'll work on getting the motor out success lower shaft has been removed I was able to do so without uh dropping the rack and pinion down so when and I think we're going to start a drinking game every time the word shaft is mentioned drink up all right motor is out so when it's in there you're able to disconnect this one and this one once you get that lower shaft off you can rotate this in there and I thought this was one but it's actually two and you pop both those out so once that was all done I then tried to pull the motor out through here or up here I wasn't able to get it lined up to be able to do so and it was really tight down low so what I ended up doing was removing the brake assembly which wasn't hard it was three bolts one two and a lower one and then right here there's a pin with a cotter pin you just pull that and under those bolts pop that down and the motor came right out all right we got the new series six all opened up here and obviously motor the new Standalone ECU the longer one is the lower shaft shorter one is the upper shaft and then you have the ECU mounts that amount to this and then there is one Mount that looks like that that mounts the existing frame and then the motor mounts to that we also have the wiring which is pretty straightforward two battery positive and ground and then comes up plugs to the ECU and then the two off of the motor also plugged to the new ECU so let's get after it and start putting this together so first step is uh gonna put the lower shaft in once the lower shaft's in I'm going to get this mounted once that's mounted we will then put the motor in connect it to the lower shaft and then attach it to the Mount so let's go to there it's one thing that I found that's made it easier when installing these shafts back onto the rack and pinion and the steering motor is to just spread these gaps open a little bit more makes it go on so much easier and putting the chest back in it's pretty exp self-explanatory if you just look in the ends you can see there's big splines and fine splines so the fine splines go back onto the rack and pinion and the big spines go on the new eps so we're just going to get that slipped in there so we got that back into the hole and we're going to go connect that to the top of the rack and pinion okay all right we're gonna get the EPS motor mount Ed to the frame so this sits on the back side of the frame with the slot heading towards the passenger side a-pillar and then you're going to use the M8 by 50 bolts through the existing mounting holes but the difference is we're going to actually put a spacer on the back side of here behind each one before we put the nut on all right so just a tip that took me a second to figure out so when you're installing the motor to the motor mount the actual power the old power steering unit the motor came off over on this side so I went and sawing the new one the black cylinder part of the motor actually is going that angle so when you're putting that mounting bracket in you have that slot here make sure you position that steering motor there and in that slot Groove and then Mount these and Loosely mount everything and then once everything you're sure everything fits go ahead and tighten it up foreign so I hand tightened the four bolts holding the motor to the motor mount so they've been hand tightened now I'm going to align everything there's definitely some movement that you're able to adjust to get it right where you want it to go and once you have that I'm going to tighten the floor motor mounts once that's done I'm going to tighten these three frame mounts so you can see that motor that black part of the motor is facing up kind of at an angle slightly to the passenger side we got the motor mount put in and then the motor mount to the frame everything is tight and secured and plenty of clearance around it let's put in the ECU so here are the existing plugs off the old uh EPS motor what I did is I just covered it up and electrical tape and then zip tied them up here out of the way because where the new unit's a standalone unit it's not going to use these existing cords all right so when you first pull out the new EPS excuse me sorry the ECU for the eps you have to mount this back bracket onto the back of it this one then mounts to that one what I did before I put it into position is I plugged in all the wires on the opposite side just was a lot easier why I could hold it out here and see it and then mounted the ECU to the frame all right so we plugged in the wiring harness like I mentioned before and ran the harness over down through the tunnel and to the battery then off the harness there is a blue wire which they tell you to cut off you don't need then there's a white wire and the white wire stubbed right here and I had to connect another wire to it because we had to run that back up here and to the accessory but all we got left now is to put the top shaft back in so I'm going to get after that one and we'll be back here in a minute all right whole system's wired in everything's mounted everything's plugged in uh what I need to do now is I've got the dash ignition temporarily wired back in and on the harness that comes with the series six unit there is a red light down here you can see right there so in order to make sure it is functioning properly you're supposed to plug the ignition back in turn it on and if it blinks once in one second and then turns off you have proper operation so let's check it out it looks like we're good to go we just got the one blink so awesome all right so as you can see we got everything mounted in here um everything went good it was a good process good install really not that bad just a few tips and tricks that I shared in the video will help you get it done a little bit quicker but I'm going to go ahead and get this all put back together it's going to take a little bit and then we're going to go out and test it and we'll give you our honest opinion let you know what we think so we're hoping for good things and then what we're gonna do um I'll shoot another video when we swap out the steering rack so we're going to swap that out with the rack boss 2.0 and I think the combination of the two the 600 watt Series 6 new EPS motor the rack boss I think it's going to be a great combination so we'll keep you guys posted