relaxamigo
06-16-2015, 10:35 AM
I had purchased an s13 for a good deal, and I was so excited that I completely overlooked the fact that this thing had HICAS. It's cool and all, but this was a drift chassis so it had to go.
Now there are a few ways you can go about deleting your HICAS (the lock bar, plugging the rack, etc) but I wanted to get rid of everything completely and leave no remains of the ratchet contraption.
The way I'm about to describe is by swapping subframes from a non HICAS car. I want to outline EVERYTHING you should need to completely remove it, information that I wish I had when I was doing the conversion, but learned the hard way. There are bits here and there, but I wanted to have everything in one place for the peace of mind for the next person!
Mine also came with ABS and I wanted to delete that as well, so this is part of the guide.
Let's start from the rear end and work towards the front:
-rear subframe from non HICAS car, yes they're different.
-diff from a non HICAS car (HICAS came with VLSD)
-knuckles from a non HICAS car, HICAS knuckles have mounts for TIE rods instead of TOE rods
-rear toe rods
-NON-ABS driveshaft (ABS driveshaft is shorter because the snout on the VLSD that came with HICAS is slightly longer because of the ABS sensor)
-Non-ABS brake master cylinder
-New brake lines (don't be lazy, just replace them)
-Non-HICAS power steering reservoir (HICAS one is huge and has an outlet for the rear
-Non-HICAS P/S pump
-Non-HICAS P/S lines
The whole swap is much easier if you can find yourself a complete non-HICAS rear end and a driveshaft, you can just swap them all in. I just pieced it together, and replaced subframe bushings while I was down there. The black subframe came of another car of mine and I swapped it onto my drift chassis:
http://imageshack.com/a/img538/8314/TAo2Jx.jpg
For power steering lines: you can try to find factory non-hicas ones, but as we know they're garbage and leak a bunch. I just did a custom setup with ISIS high pressure line, a small permacool fluid cooler, and lines and fittings from anplumbing.com. There's a thread on here that goes into more detail on the sizes of the fittings and such. If you're lazy and don't want to play around with that you can get the complete chase bays kit. Made things cleaner, and easier:
http://imageshack.com/a/img661/5515/os90Gi.jpg
You can effectively remove all the HICAS bullshit from the underside of the car. There are a few long hardlines that run along the bottom of the passenger side of the car next to the fuel lines. Get rid of all of them, those are the ones that went to the rear steering rack. Also, you can remove the ABS sensors that go to the front brakes on the knuckle.
The HICAS is essentially a clusterfuck, just follow the lines from the P/S reservoir and the pump to the rear of the car and get rid of them all.
All done! Remember to put fresh fluid in your diff, and bleed your power steering circuit:
http://imageshack.com/a/img633/5411/RW9s3H.jpg
If you guys have any questions feel free to post on here, hope this helps!
Now there are a few ways you can go about deleting your HICAS (the lock bar, plugging the rack, etc) but I wanted to get rid of everything completely and leave no remains of the ratchet contraption.
The way I'm about to describe is by swapping subframes from a non HICAS car. I want to outline EVERYTHING you should need to completely remove it, information that I wish I had when I was doing the conversion, but learned the hard way. There are bits here and there, but I wanted to have everything in one place for the peace of mind for the next person!
Mine also came with ABS and I wanted to delete that as well, so this is part of the guide.
Let's start from the rear end and work towards the front:
-rear subframe from non HICAS car, yes they're different.
-diff from a non HICAS car (HICAS came with VLSD)
-knuckles from a non HICAS car, HICAS knuckles have mounts for TIE rods instead of TOE rods
-rear toe rods
-NON-ABS driveshaft (ABS driveshaft is shorter because the snout on the VLSD that came with HICAS is slightly longer because of the ABS sensor)
-Non-ABS brake master cylinder
-New brake lines (don't be lazy, just replace them)
-Non-HICAS power steering reservoir (HICAS one is huge and has an outlet for the rear
-Non-HICAS P/S pump
-Non-HICAS P/S lines
The whole swap is much easier if you can find yourself a complete non-HICAS rear end and a driveshaft, you can just swap them all in. I just pieced it together, and replaced subframe bushings while I was down there. The black subframe came of another car of mine and I swapped it onto my drift chassis:
http://imageshack.com/a/img538/8314/TAo2Jx.jpg
For power steering lines: you can try to find factory non-hicas ones, but as we know they're garbage and leak a bunch. I just did a custom setup with ISIS high pressure line, a small permacool fluid cooler, and lines and fittings from anplumbing.com. There's a thread on here that goes into more detail on the sizes of the fittings and such. If you're lazy and don't want to play around with that you can get the complete chase bays kit. Made things cleaner, and easier:
http://imageshack.com/a/img661/5515/os90Gi.jpg
You can effectively remove all the HICAS bullshit from the underside of the car. There are a few long hardlines that run along the bottom of the passenger side of the car next to the fuel lines. Get rid of all of them, those are the ones that went to the rear steering rack. Also, you can remove the ABS sensors that go to the front brakes on the knuckle.
The HICAS is essentially a clusterfuck, just follow the lines from the P/S reservoir and the pump to the rear of the car and get rid of them all.
All done! Remember to put fresh fluid in your diff, and bleed your power steering circuit:
http://imageshack.com/a/img633/5411/RW9s3H.jpg
If you guys have any questions feel free to post on here, hope this helps!