EPS Conversion?

[Big Pussy]

The little 14 gauge wire most likely only controls the coil side of a horn relay and is powered off a smaller fuse. The 20 amp horn fuse most likely feeds the contact side of the relay That powers the actual horn and will have a larger gauge wire for the higher load.

Nope. The #14 is on the contact side going directly to the pair of horns over the left wheel house. I spliced my #12 to it and ran to another pair of freeway blasters on the othe side. It was obvious when you splice a larger known size to the puney oem wire. All protected at 20 amps. Must be consideted an intermittent load. Beep Beep.

 

[earthling]

So why is the horn circuit on my 2023 RAM wired with little 14 gauge wire but fused with a 20 amp fuse ?

The truck is built in NA to your NA specs.

That white red wire on your fuse block feed is at best 10 gauge. See what happens if the feed wire rubs through to ground near the fuse block end. It will be a red hot wire in less than two seconds since there is no fuse protection at the starter solenoid where it is powered from. There is then a real risk that the sled burns down.

Because of two reasons. One, your horn is not a constant use circuit and two, they don't care about voltage drop for the horn. This is a case of the problem is self regulating. In the chart below you can see that for a non-critical electrical circuit (horn) and using 10% voltage drop as the guide, you can get away with 14Ga. If it were a motor, you would want to use the 3% (or less) voltage drop calculation.

 

[UsfighterNH]

This thread is amazing! A huge thank you to everyone who has contributed. I had a quick couple of questions though...I have all the parts to do this on a 2024 XTX-LE. First question is I tried for fun putting the column shafts on the actuator spline by hand and couldn't even get it started. I did not use much force but is there a trick to that? I even tried the lower column and same deal. Also one of the parts that was not common to my stock sled is the stopper...is that to prevent steering beyond the limit? I plan to do this install soon and have my local dealer do it. I am going to see if I can video document the entire process for YouTube but have a feeling they won't go for it. Might just do it myself with a couple fellow Sidewinder owners and record the process that way. Thanks in advance for any help regarding spline shaft fitting and stopper.

Season coming soon! Praying for a better season.

 

[KRK1]

This thread is amazing! A huge thank you to everyone who has contributed. I had a quick couple of questions though...I have all the parts to do this on a 2024 XTX-LE. First question is I tried for fun putting the column shafts on the actuator spline by hand and couldn't even get it started. I did not use much force but is there a trick to that? I even tried the lower column and same deal. Also one of the parts that was not common to my stock sled is the stopper...is that to prevent steering beyond the limit? I plan to do this install soon and have my local dealer do it. I am going to see if I can video document the entire process for YouTube but have a feeling they won't go for it. Might just do it myself with a couple fellow Sidewinder owners and record the process that way. Thanks in advance for any help regarding spline shaft fitting and stopper.

Season coming soon! Praying for a better season.

Take a look at the splines in the EPS motor. You'll see one of the splines on each side has a notch cut in it. The notch lines up from one side to the other. That notched spline is where the bolt slot in the steering column and the bolt slot in the pivot base the motor sits down on line up to go together. The slot described is where the bolt goes through to squeeze things together. If not lined up it won't go together.

I did the same thing as you and put the column and base onto the motor on the bench and how I noticed the notched spline. Also, the paint that is in the column and base splines makes things tight. I took a small file and dressed the areas where the motor splines were raising up the paint until I got it all to slide together without a lot of force. I want it to come apart if needed. When I do the final install I plan to use some lube on the splines.