I drove a miata with both PS and without. I noticed no difference except the steering ratio and a slight increase in turning effort, but it was by no means monumental. I prefer the car with PS. Keep in mind the car without PS had the factory manual rack and the skinny 14 inch tires as well.

 

Yes this is an old thread but people always ask about power steering removal so I will give my 2 cents:

-I recently removed my a/c and decided to go without ps for a while with the pump still in place. This makes parking lot speeds tough, but I lived with it for a week. Anything above 10-15mph is fine, but effort is noticeably greater below that. My 90lb girlfriend could handle it when she tried.

-I then decided to take out the 2 hoses FM says to plug, and see how that was. I planned on leaving all the ps stuff in there incase I didnt like it I could quickly go back, but as soon as I turned the wheel to get some of the fluid out, I immediately decided to gut everything else out because there was that little resistance.

-Car is now awesome, and any car with PS feels like an old arcade racing game like hot pursuit. Gives me confidence in corners as I can feel everything going on up front. Effort is only significantly heavier at 0mph. It's sooooooo niiiiiice. This is how all miatas should be.

-I think leaving the pump in for a week helped, possibly getting me more accostomed to the effort.

-I havn't looped the other 2 lines, and I dont intend to unless I get bored.

-I regularly parallel park, and this was not a problem even with the pump in place.

-my sperm count has doubled and I bench more since the PS removal, and my engine bay is now ready for ABSURDFLOW

 

Can you put the gubbins from the depowered rack into the skinnier manual rack?
yep ur right cant be arsed with technical talk

 

It wouldn't be worth the effort if you could, paulsub.

FWIW I love my looped-lines PS rack. I can feel the front tires losing grip if they do and feedback is much, much improved.

Only the wimpiest of guys should have any complaints about increased effort. My car runs almost max caster and 225s, and it's no problem at all.

The PS pump and lines weigh a bit (what, like, 35 pounds?) and when I was autocrossing with PS the pump was having trouble keeping up.

 

Interesting question... That would be nice in order to have the compactness of the manual rack but the ratio of the PS rack. At the very least the piston would have to come off of the PS rack but that is good depower procedure anyway.

 

If it's a longer ratio, wouldn't that mean the pinion is smaller? I doubt the larger PS gearing would fit. I'm incredibly knowledgeable about gears, but beyond tearing apart my rack to take the seal out, I have no experience with rack and pinions.

 

already done the full de power was thinking for the compactness of the manual rack gotta be a bit lighter use rack and pinion from the power bung it in the manuals body