Power Steering upgrade to early F

The passenger air bag if fitted as an extra has to be programmed in with a Rover T4 Textbook programamme.

Have you fitted the EPAS as yet ?
Its good the cars were pre wired for it.

Disconnect the battery before you start because of the airbag. All you should need to do is swap the column over, plug in it's 2 connectors. Plug the ECU in to it's 2 connectors and put a fuse in the empty fuseholder. Fit the the stalk switches, clockspring , steering wheel and plastic cowling from your old column. You will do it easily in an afternoon as it's all plug and play swaps, nothing to modify

Expect to pay £ 40 to £ 50 for an EPAS column and ECU delivered. The specialist 2nd hand parts suppliers appear to have lots of them for sensible money which suggests they are pretty durable units .

Thanks NaN, that's a very confidence inspiring guide.

No I haven't yet, I'm doing OK with turning the wheel as the car is rolling, relearning old skills.

My wife has yet to drive the car, when she does I suspect I may be revisiting this thread!

JeremyC wrote:

Thanks. Does, the passenger airbag just plug in to an empty connector somewhere?

The passenger air bag has 2 plugs, the SRS ECU has to be switched over to dual airbags.
I am hoping this is possible in pscan.

Alternatively swap the one in the car for one from a dual airbag car.

The MK1 F has a slightly different steering column with a different EPAS column and different EPAS ECU, to the MK2 F and TF so make sure you get the correct version for your car.

talkingcars wrote:

JeremyC wrote:

Thanks. Does, the passenger airbag just plug in to an empty connector somewhere?

The passenger air bag has 2 plugs, the SRS ECU has to be switched over to dual airbags.
I am hoping this is possible in pscan.

Alternatively swap the one in the car for one from a dual airbag car.

I have fitted a passenger side air bag and when plugged in and switched on the warning light did indeed stay on . Pscan can't interogate and switch the ECU to recognise the second A/B . Phillip has confirmed this in a previous message to him some time ago. I was quoted £60 for an MG garage to do this with their diagnostic tools . I lost interest after the quote 😕.

As I have said before it took some chasing to get my passenger airbag recognised by the controller & a lot of the frustrations were caused by misinformation. One hand said it was just a matter of putting it on the appropriate gizmo & the other hand says that there’s no gizmo that will enable a standard controller. Eventually I did what I should have done at the outset, contact Darren at ‘Bitz. Even that wasn’t plain sailing, but now all the components within the system recognise each other, hands are shaken & the light goes out.
It was a needlessly long haul; with the correct info at the outset hours could have been saved.
M

What was the workaround that made the difference ?

For me the work around was doing what should have been done at the outset, contact Darren.
I hadn’t, at that time, twigged just how complete their service was or just how knowledgeable they were. Like many contributors on here I have used them on numerous occasions & I have yet to be disappointed.
M

talkingcars wrote:

The MK1 F has a slightly different steering column with a different EPAS column and different EPAS ECU, to the MK2 F and TF so make sure you get the correct version for your car.

Does anyone know what the differences actually are ? As some of you know there are 2 of us on the forum who are currently transplanting MGF EPAS systems into other cars, coincidentally MGBs. Is it an established fact there is an incompatibility between the Mk1 and Mk2 as this isnt at all evident from the wiring diagrams ?

Do you have both f diagrams, the early iteration & the later (obviously).
I would be astonished if either of you were without the later version. The earlier is less easy to find & that’s more to do with folk finding one without knowing about the other.
I know the Headmaster ticked me off for pointing another questioner to a third party website when we have a perfectly good version of our own, however the early version which I refer to & have a copy on my desktop came off Dieter’s website. This a monochrome offering & is less easy to interpret but going from memory, (not a particularly strong recommendation at my time of life), the sensing pot differences are shown, in comparison to the colour copy.
The tf diagram should also be consulted.
M

Those wiring diagrams were the first port of call, Useful to identify small wiring colour differences but they arent something that could be used to compare the signal requirements of the various generation of EPAS ECUs. That site usefully lists 4x versions of the ECU but not the differences between them.