I’m looking for technical help or recommendations on: ND Steering Rack options
My ND is great but if there’s anything I would like to improve as a modification its the steering feel. The electric steering setup just feels dead and numb on the road with very little self centring - my father in law’s boring BMW 220d active tourer has better steering feel on twisty lanes…
So that got me thinking of options…
If BMW can tune the 220 active tourer electric steering to feel good - can anyone do a software remap of the steering ecu on the ND MX5 to change the feel?
or 2) Is there a hydraulic conversion anywhere? (My son’s hydraulic steering Clio197 also has much better steering feel than the MX5…
or 3) Is there anyone who’s fitted a proper manual steering rack conversion to an ND (like people have to NBs)? I know the feel would be heavier, but its a light sports car and I grew up on non-power steered cars for the first decade of my motoring, so I’d be fine with that…
I’ve had it on track and you don’t notice it being “bad” on track, but I’d just like to be able to feel something nice when on twisty roads and get fed up winding the lock off to straighten up after turning out of junctions at slow speed…
(And yes - I have had four wheel alignment checked and its as per factory spec, with factory wheels & tyres…)
Fit lowering springs and do more than having the alignment checked have a specific tune done to match your desired driving feel and car response. Factory spec is wide open and can be ‘within spec’ yet not be optimal to drive.
I see you’re in Lancs, give Paul Roddison @rodders in Sheffield a call and he can fettle it properly, he does tend to be busy.
A well tuned (steering/suspension) ND is agile and gives plenty of feedback and loses the dead feel in the centre.
I’ve got about 9 degrees of castor on mine and it’s still totally devoid of feel, much like every recent BMW I’ve owned tbh. I’ve made it worse by fitting 215 GY assy 5’s which is odd, although there’s a lot more grip, just b*goer all feel.
E39 M5 (hydraulic ps) was the last one with proper steering feel.
Back in the day my wife’s diesel ST mondeo estate was better in that respect, and that was front wheel drive.
Mine was much improved by lowered springs and Paul Roddison’s set up. But it’s still no Lotus , or even some more mundane stuff . I suspect the majority of younger owners will never have experienced the sort of razor sharp steering and feedback you get in a non pas or at least non epas car , so maybe really good steering is going the way of the dinosaur ?
I’m not sure its even steering “feel” that I’m missing. Thinking a bit harder, it could be just the lack of self centering that’s annoying me.
I can throw it around Blyton all day and it never bothers me (albeit never reaching a speed where grip was ever lost…).
I suspect that its the annoyance of having to manually wind the lock off after cornering that’s bugging me.
I had an Audi A3 after two Alfa 156s. Snake Pass was my default route to visit my daughter in Uni for five years. The 156 steering was wonderful. The A3 felt completely numb and I felt that I had no idea what its wheels were doing or where its grip levels were - but it was the Alfa that fell off Snake Pass whereas the A3 never faltered.
Perhaps I’ll just stop moaning and enjoy everything else about it…
And a 159 Q4 (2009) I hired in France (free upgrade!) was woefully numb on the motorway because of the dead spot wander, while utterly superb in the mountain twisties.
Tbh ‘seat of the pants’ feel in my ND2 is quite good, there’s just no feel through the steering wheel as to the road surface, or how the tyres are loading up, hence only the seat of the pants feeling when it’s starting to struggle, front and rear.
Many drivers below a certain age have only ever experienced front wheel drive cars which are very different, and maybe that’s why the ‘sport’ or whatever settings on many cars only increase the weight of the steering, which people mistake for increased feel.
Caterhams, Lotus, most Porsche, 20+ year old BMW’s (some of which I’ve owned) and some others seem to get it right, but they are mainly rear wheel drive, and have either hydraulic pas or an unassisted rack.
Imho the ND is a great fun car, but without some serious engineering input will never have great steering, irrespective of the geo setup.
The best car I ever had for steering feel was my Mk1 Cortina GT. No power steering and I even fitted a smaller after market 12" racing steering wheel. Because I had never driven a car with power steering (this was back in 1972), I never felt the need. I seem to remember my Cavalier SRi didn’t have PS either and that was a hoot to drive. Makes you wonder why a teeny little roadster like the MX-5 really needs it. Probably for overweight Americans with no muscles
I think it’s to allow those without much strength, (mainly women, but plenty of men as well) to operate the car at low speeds, when parking at Waitrose for instance.
Mazda made a story around the ePAS when the MK4 launched. An advantage is that the steering effort can be programmed to whatever the designers want, and vary by speed/steering angle/whatever else that’s relevant and for which real time data are available. It’s quite noticeable that the steering weights up a lot at motorway speeds and I’m sure that’s intentional. So it’s possible somebody could program it differently, at least in theory.
Remember when cars all went very light and floaty past 80mph? But I suppose that might have been because some of them were trying to take off.
I can’t say I’ve noticed a self-centring problem on my 1.5, and I suspect this behaviour is affected by geometry. Mine has never been touched, I like what it does so I’m not ‘fixing’ it. It steers straight, brakes straight, and wears tyres very evenly.
For myself I don’t mess about with wider tyres, or lowering, more grip obviously matters for racing but is unnecessary for me The car has a lot of grip compared with any of the RWD cars I drove in the last century, and I even like the suspension travel and a bit of roll. Easy to please, me.
