hey all, thanks for the nice comments! heres a write up about the EPS conversion (mainly lazily copied and pasted over from the vvoc forum)
after a quick trial fit of the corsa column it was obvious that a fair few mods will have to be done to the top end of the column in order to fit the viva switch assembly and steering wheel in the original position, the top section of the corsa column is much shorter
the first job was to remove the outer casing from the top section of the viva column and measure to the length required and then replace the corresponding shorter part of the corsa column, ending up with this
next the inner shaft had to be adapted to fit, this was a fair bit more difficult!!
the inner shaft of the corsa column extends from the motor housing for a few inches and then has a splined end, this fits into a short hollow collar section in order for the column to collapse in the event of a crash, on the end of this is another short section of shaft that is splined to fit the steering wheel
the welds holding the steering wheel mounting section onto the splined collar were cut and a section of the viva shaft had to be filed down about 1mm all around so that this could then be inserted an inch into this collar in order to ensure the whole thing was straight before being welded up to make this..
the splined collar is the wider part at the far left end of the modded shaft, the little peice in the pic is the corsa section that was removed
here is a pic showing this inner and outer part put together (you can just about see a couple of the pop rivets that go into the bearing collar that holds the inner shaft) below it is the much shorter outer casing which was from the corsa and the remaining lower outer casing from the viva colum
- note the erm.. corrugated? black section below the mounting brackets so the outer casing can collapse
heres a pic of the newly modded top section bolted onto the motor assembly
after another trial fit in the magnum a couple of small (ish) problems were found
1) the large bracket behind the motor that you can see in the pic above gets in the way of the brake/clutch pedal
2) the motor gets in the way of the later type accelerator pedal (the rod that comes up by the bulkead hits it)
3) it also gets in the way of where the break light switch fits
4) the mounting point that is used from the corsa column puts the whole thing at a steeper angle than usual which would lower the steering wheel
solving "1" was simple.. the bracket behind the motor went in the bin - it doesnt attach to anything when mounted in the viva anyway
the only solution we could think of for "2" is to use an earlier organ pedal type accelerator
to replace the push-button type brake light switch I fitted a T peice in the brake line with a hydraulic switch
to fix the funny angle that the corsa mounts were causing it was back to the workbench to cut the corsa mounts off the column and fit the viva mounting bracket on
- in order to make the mounting holes line up when the bracket was swapped over we had to remove the two sliding inserts and extend the slot they fit in another cm or so and replace the inserts..
BEWARE! THE INSERTS BREAK EEEEEEASILY!
we broke both ooops!
luckily we had another two on the magnum column which we pinched
the corrugated black section of the outer casing had to be cut off, not really an issue as it simply covers up a plain tube which slides inside another in the event of a bash - after these two fixes we ended up with an outer casing that looks like this
once again the whole lot was re-assembled and mounted back up to the motor..
heres a few pics of the sucsessfull trial fit, it all lines up perfectly! could probably get away with not even using the universal joint that is normally fitted to the rear end of the corsa column/motor..
here you can see the motor is not visible (excuse the wires everywhere!) once the plastic surrounds are on everything is hidden
heres a closeup of the mountings, they were pretty solid and seemed happy to take the additional weight of the motor without the troublesome lower bracket
heres a view down through the dash where you can see the motor nicley tucked away
glad to say the bottom section of the column was fairly simple to make up compared to the top section
first the bearing that sits in the bulkhead had to be sandwiched between a plate as its normally held in by the bottom of the column
the bottom end of the corsa column consists of two universal joints connected by a short shaft that slides inside to allow a small ammount of collapse in the event of a crash, to get this to work with the viva shaft it unfortunatley loses its collapsability
a small section of the inner part of the shaft was cut away from the universal joint and reversed so it could be welded into the tail end of the viva column
then a small section was cut off the outer section leading from the other universal joint
this universal joint and outer section was then slotted over the peice in the end of the viva column and welded up
heres a pic of the bottom section fitted
as a bit of an afterthought we dediced that it would be best to try and use the original bracket that we removed from the back of the motor housing (which fouled on the cluch pedal) to add some extra support as the motor is HEAVY!!!
by chopping the ring part of the bracket it could be turned around so it didnt get in the way of the clutch pedal, with a bit of an extension plate we then bolted it through the bulkhead (next to where the wiper motor sits)
this made it all rock solid
dead chuffed!
the little black box that I bought off fleabay to emulate the signals normally produced by the cars ECU came with a handy wiring diagram - I havn't taken any photos of the wiring because wires arent very photogenic!! basically this part is pretty simple - if you can wire in a stereo you can wire in this!
the main power supply to the motor has two wires, one needs to be connected to the battery via a 50A inline fuse, the other goes to a good earth point, the little controll box then plugs into the ecu and uses an ignition switched +12v feed from the viva and an additional earth
once we had "bench tested" the setup in the stripped magnum shell the whole lot was transplanted into the firenza...
and I'm glad to say its done just that! ive got a thread up on the VVOC website about the conversion but if peeps are interested I could put it up here too 
I'm trying resist doing to much else to it right now as I'm supposed to be working on my 78 magnum and using this firenza as my daily! unfortunatley Ive never been able to do one thing at a time so theres a load of plans in the works for both cars ;D 
and I'm glad to say its done just that! ive got a thread up on the VVOC website about the conversion but if peeps are interested I could put it up here too 
I'm trying resist doing to much else to it right now as I'm supposed to be working on my 78 magnum and using this firenza as my daily! unfortunatley Ive never been able to do one thing at a time so theres a load of plans in the works for both cars ;D 
? Don't be shy, show it!!
luckily we had another two on the magnum column which we pinched
its got one helluva roar on it now when you give it a poke!
