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Self driving 1993 Volvo with open pilot

Together with some friends, I decided earlier this year to particpate in the Carbage run 2025 Winter edition. This is a 6-day journey in winter all the way through Sweden to the polar circle, and back down to Helsinki in a group of roughly 400 cars. One small catch (you might have guessed it from the name): your car has to be “carbage”. In practice, this means it needs to be at least 20 years old, and with a day value of less than €1000. This route, including the drive to get there and back from Belgium would mean driving roughly 6000km in just over a week, often in less-than-ideal conditions. In addition, our car will also be judged on originality, which is why this idea popped into my head: Why not make it self-driving?

Since you can download the schematics and connector references from Toyota for a small fee, it was easy to figure out that the steering rack only needs GND, constant 12V (fused at 80A! While you could just disable the hydraulic power assist and just rely on the new electric one, I fear that the steering rack might not be designed to handle the higher amounts of torque it would constantly receive from the EPS during normal driving and might potentially wear out over time. I think part 2 will be about the wiring and the custom ECU I designed to keep the actuators happy, and to implement things like the cruise control buttons, as well as reading out the speed, blinkers, …

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