Electric water pump/electric PS pump
 

Does anyone know if an electric water pump or an electric PS pump has ever been tried?

Not sure a 12v motor that you would want to carry around or a massive power source is the best option.

Some Minis (or all) utilize an electric PS. In my experience, it's not the best set up...

google or a search on this forum will find lots of talk about electric PS. cup cars run electric PS, and you can find cup car electic PS motors on ebay and the forums. expensive, and they are just repurposed mercedes a-class electric ps motors. mostly a euro thing, you cna find them (relatively) cheap on ebay.uk. another common electic PS pump used is from the mr2. regardless, watch what you buy as different pumps (even for the same car depending on year) have different controls; you want something that is on/off and without steering position and engine speed controls.

renegade hybrids does electric water pump conversions, but for replacing the m96 with an ls-series engine (no room for accessories when putting the ls in a 996). most of the parts are off the shelf from rodders (search jegs and whatnot); you would have to fab a blocking plate for the water pump and tstat.

I was wondering when you were going to start thinking about this when you started playing with pulley sizes. Do you plan to race your Boxster on the track?

Davies Craig sell an aftermarket elec. water pump with a controller to adjust pump speed as needed.
Davies Craig

The mr2 is the one I had in mind when thinking about PS pumps. Its pretty convenient in that it has an integrated reservoir and the controls are pretty straight forward. It's my understanding that a lot of modern cars (Mini Cooper included) have gone to electric PS for mpg and power. In fact, some of them don't seem to use fluid or pumps at all - just an electric motor attached to the steering shaft.

Elect. PS and WP would certainly work on a Boxster and could be mounted forward for car balance and easy access. Toyota has a 12v PS setup that works seamlessly with 986/996 cars. I never added these but it could be done with controller for around $2K.

I'm with you on the on/off switch... my thought is that the car is so light and weight neutral, steering effort is probably pretty mild regardless. About the only time you'd want it is around town and even then mostly just in parking lots. IMO, turning the PS off would probably make the box a lot more fun to drive while still maintaining the convenience of not going through an upper body workout every time you hit the mall.

Jegs is where I started with water pumps (I guess great minds really do think alike ;)). A small, stand alone pump would be easy, cheap, and robust. For simplicity, I'd probably just stick it in-line and use the old pulley driven pump itself as the block off plate. Just remove the impeller, pulley, shaft, bearing, etc and plug the hole. Bingo! Instant block off plate with perfect dimensions and intake fitting that's ready to rock 'n roll with a stock $5 gasket. The only difference is the incoming water is already pressurized instead of being pumped through the housing via the impeller.

Here's a link to Pedro's write up with some decent pics for visualization:

Replace Water Pump

(BTW, electrifying accessories has been shown to increase efficiency resulting in mpg and HP gains by reducing parasitic drag on the engine).

To put things in perspective, I've used a non-turbo 2g eclipse as a DD to run back and forth to the day job for the last couple of years. The car was cheap to buy, cheap to maintain, practically free to insure, and I don't care about racking up the mileage during my 110 miles/day commute.

They're 140 hp stock out of the box. Not much but enough for a 2600 lbs car that's pretty slippery to the wind. Plus, I have a few ideas to shed some pretty serious pounds without stripping it out like some high school kid with his Honda.

Now here's where things get fun though... There is some debate to these numbers but the dynos report that the PS pump alone uses 5-8 hp at highway speeds. To put this in perspective, the car only requires about 20 hp to maintain 75 mph.

With some aero mods, a change to a 3.55 final drive ratio, an UD pulley, and a PS delete, the car routinely gets 44 mpg and dynos at about 155 hp running on the ********************tiest gas possible. Ground breaking? No, but it has no problem running at 130 mph on the highway with absolutely no fuss or effort. Hell, its wearing cinder block heavy 17's and running staggered 235 front/255 rear tires (on a fwd car :rolleyes:). Certainly not because it needs them but because I like the grip and look. Haha.

The short version of all this is that accessories are a huge drag on an engine and thats why everyone is going electric.

Sam the 2012 991 (911) comes standard with elec. P/S integral to the R&P & I assume the new Box & Cayman do too. The waterpumps are so light & have nice bearings so I would guess the weight gain, complexity, & expense of elec. conversion would not be worth it. I believe the best aftermarket part void waiting to be developed is a lightweight aluminum pressure-plate. I believe you were replacing accessory pulleys on your box, did you get the new 987 plastic rollers?

You know what, I didn't. I didn't realize those were interchangeable. Are the 987 pulleys considered an upgrade? Are they stronger, lighter, cheaper, etc? What is the benefit to the 987 pulleys? I only ask because I really do need to replace my pulleys and if the opportunity exists to upgrade while I'm in there anyway, now would be the time to do it!

Your idler pulley looks chipped.

987's are plastic & lighter. I don't know if they are interchangable. Sometimes new Porsche parts supercede old versions. Often Porsche waits until old inventory is sold to supercede into the new parts. My rollers are fairly new so I haven't tried the 987 parts yet.

Yeah, the upper idler pulley is actually almost completely gone. The bearing and all that is still there and working but the outer part of the pulley is effectively torn off! Haha

I recieved this in an email today from GSR.
GSR Autosport Electric Power Steering Pump Conversion Kit - Porsche 986, 987 Boxster, 996, 997 911

Yep, that looks about right! $1500 for a complete and fully engineered system. Is it worth it? I guess it depends... if a guy's PS pump takes a crap, I think this could be a pretty attractive alternative.

Either way, its pretty cool that off the shelf solutions currently exist. I especially like the simplicity of their idler pulley and mount.

The GSR kit looks pretty slick! It is a complete kit and has been tested so there is some confidence that the whole thing will work when you're done.