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Power Steering Failure

181K views 419 replies 112 participants last post by  Therichbutler 
#1 ·
Well it was going so well! 26 months in and no issues then started up Last Tuesday after a short run home from work and ping power assistance reduced warning with some additional associated warnings.
Let me tell you now you need PAS on a 2 ton car!
Drove back to work (around 5 miles) and it kicked back in after a couple of miles - glitch I hoped - nope after restart back again and to dangerous to risk any further driving.
Waited ages for LR assist who eventually sent the AA who did their best to no avail. Car recovered following day to dealers and I eventually got a courtesy car - Jag EPace nice to drive but not really that practical but does have operating PS.
Not heard of this fault before - AA suspect alternator fault - still awaiting update from dealer. Car has only done 17k
 
#354 ·
ducatimally said:
I'm wondering if this may be my issue. I've posted on another thread my Dash lighting up like an Xmas tree - AEB, Park Brake, Stability Control, PAS, TPMS etc. and now the bloody thing won't even lock! (Please come and nick it).

Long story short, convinced it was the Battery, had it replaced at Halfords yesterday (Tuesday). Returned today as still it up like an Xmas tree, however pretty sure it's not the battery now.

So reading this thread, could it be A. the wiring Loom issue as detailed on P.1 or B. a PAS failure? I had presumed the lack of PAS was because the "brain" had disabled it due to the warning (N.B. it feels like it still works, but not fully), although I recall I've heard a bit of a "grind" when on full lock, now I come to think!

If B. - anyone else experienced the Northern Lights dashboard show as well?

It REALLY is going this time...............
Had a similar issue in March. Every warning light on dash, start/stop button inoperative then total electrical shutdown with brakes on. Went on a wagon to the dealer where I had purchased it. They told me it was a battery issue so replaced that. When I questioned further electrical checks such as ECU they wanted £200+ to do the diagnostic check. That revealed the ECU had also failed. I had the vehicle 2 years and believed it to be out of warranty Sept 2020 _ only 13500 miles so asked if Landrover would contribute to cost (£1700+), fairly quick response _ yes 80%!! Extremely poor contact with the dealer. No updates, failed to ring back when update requested. After 2 weeks the fault had recurred twice on test drives with ECU and battery replaced. Landrover technical advised dealer to strip down wiring and after 7 weeks fault was found to be chafing on the wiring harness behind the dashboard. Final bill was just under £4000. However I had had a senior moment and at 4 weeks into saga I realised I had purchased a further 12 month warranty from the dealer.After contacting LR warranty dept I was told in had purchased an 'approved' vehicle and was subject to a further 9 months LR warranty after 3 years when my 12 month purchase would take effect. Upon telling the dealer about the warranty and requesting they start a warranty claim and provide me with a replacement car - response was not possible as fault had not been identified. I contacted LR customer services who were really good. I was given a Range Rover Vogue hire car and just over a week later my car was repaired, valeted and returned to me. LR also gave me £200 as a goodwill gesture. Dealer was appalling.
It would appear this is an issue with the wiring chafing and should not have taken 7 weeks to identify.
 
#355 ·
Sheepman said:
ducatimally said:
I'm wondering if this may be my issue. I've posted on another thread my Dash lighting up like an Xmas tree - AEB, Park Brake, Stability Control, PAS, TPMS etc. and now the bloody thing won't even lock! (Please come and nick it).

Long story short, convinced it was the Battery, had it replaced at Halfords yesterday (Tuesday). Returned today as still it up like an Xmas tree, however pretty sure it's not the battery now.

So reading this thread, could it be A. the wiring Loom issue as detailed on P.1 or B. a PAS failure? I had presumed the lack of PAS was because the "brain" had disabled it due to the warning (N.B. it feels like it still works, but not fully), although I recall I've heard a bit of a "grind" when on full lock, now I come to think!

If B. - anyone else experienced the Northern Lights dashboard show as well?

It REALLY is going this time...............
Had a similar issue in March. Every warning light on dash, start/stop button inoperative then total electrical shutdown with brakes on. Went on a wagon to the dealer where I had purchased it. They told me it was a battery issue so replaced that. When I questioned further electrical checks such as ECU they wanted £200+ to do the diagnostic check. That revealed the ECU had also failed. I had the vehicle 2 years and believed it to be out of warranty Sept 2020 _ only 13500 miles so asked if Landrover would contribute to cost (£1700+), fairly quick response _ yes 80%!! Extremely poor contact with the dealer. No updates, failed to ring back when update requested. After 2 weeks the fault had recurred twice on test drives with ECU and battery replaced. Landrover technical advised dealer to strip down wiring and after 7 weeks fault was found to be chafing on the wiring harness behind the dashboard. Final bill was just under £4000. However I had had a senior moment and at 4 weeks into saga I realised I had purchased a further 12 month warranty from the dealer.After contacting LR warranty dept I was told in had purchased an 'approved' vehicle and was subject to a further 9 months LR warranty after 3 years when my 12 month purchase would take effect. Upon telling the dealer about the warranty and requesting they start a warranty claim and provide me with a replacement car - response was not possible as fault had not been identified. I contacted LR customer services who were really good. I was given a Range Rover Vogue hire car and just over a week later my car was repaired, valeted and returned to me. LR also gave me £200 as a goodwill gesture. Dealer was appalling.
It would appear this is an issue with the wiring chafing and should not have taken 7 weeks to identify.
Who was the dealer?
 
#356 ·
Can anyone in North America get hold of LTB N197?
I appreciate that this has been under discussion previously - Sarah Street stated it was released globally in April 2018 and then archived in the October. However, I have it from a second source that it was only originally released to Topix in North America and that is why no one can find it over here.
I believe this is the document that contains the detailed fitting instructions,
including the torque for the new bolts.
 
#358 ·
I had a similar experience to others here (power steering not bolts) on Saturday.

I was driving on the M4, fortunately slowly in roadworks, when warnings for power steering, abs and stability control came on. The PS became increasingly stiff and once I'd stopped and parked in a nearby 'retail park' it became almost impossible for me to use. The excellent (LV) low loader driver had to get it from the paking space before he could load it.

Surprisingly once the car was unloaded at home there were no apparent faults and it drove normally off the truck.

It is now with Harwoods in Brighton who, without having seen it, thought that it might be a wheel-speed sensor.

Any ideas? I'm rather dreading the diagnosis as I didn't renew my warranty last December, thinking that £70pm was too expensive. 🤞

Michael
 
#359 ·
Another Steering Rack Bolt Failure.

Pleased to say it was while manoeuvring in a car park so no danger, just a lot of annoyance. Tried to book in with local Landrover but the wouldn't even look at it for 3 weeks and at the point of towing I had no idea this was a common failure on these cars so I took to a local garage who specialise in old Landies.

After having read online this was a fault I contacted Landrover Customer Experience and they "accepted" it was a fault and told me they would pay for parts and labour but not towing at the Landrover Franchise but it would take a month as the franchise said or they would pay for parts only if my local guy fixed it. Chose to go through local guy, had to jump through some hoops... show a video of part broken on car and show invoice with vin number for parts purchased from Landrover. Landrover were good to their word, repaid cost of the parts Approx £2300 in vat and I paid for labour and the towing total £400. Cost of being back on the road 3 weeks sooner I think it was worth paying the labour.

Hope this story helps others gets some funds back. As my local garage told me he'd fixed an evoque for the same problem two weeks before and no one thought of asking Landrover they had paid it all, sure there are many footing this bill that shouldn't be....

Now to tackle the fact my timing chain is worn and needs replacing after 60k miles.... really not happy with the quality of this car.... definitely not fit to be called a Land Rover.
 
#360 ·
Steering Rack Failure, but Not having the bolt issue

Driving steadily down the M5 from Bristol in the first lane, the vehicle had a warning sound and looking at the instrument panel began getting a rolling list of worrying warning alerts -

Forward Alert Not Available (Orange)
Check Pedestrian Protection System (Red)
HDC Not Available, System Fault (Orange)
Power Steering Assistance Reduced (Orange + Steering Wheel Symbol)
Park Brake Fault (Orange + Brake Symbol)
Stability Control Not Available (Orange)
AEB Not Available (Orange).

Although the vehicle was driving along a fairly straight piece of the motorway I could feel that the steering had got heavier to handle (and the vehicle did not seem as stable). We pulled off the motorway at the first services but locking and unlocking the car to reset made no difference to the warnings and reduced assisted power steering issue. We continued slowly and at one point the power steering went completely and partially came back on a while later with a small jolt, which was not enjoyable. Driving nearer home along country roads was quite a struggle without assisted steering. The next day the car was fine but all the messages came back after twenty miles and power assisted steering failed completely shortly after. The vehicle was very heavy to steer without any assistance. Our local Land Rover Dealer diagnosed that I required a new steering rack (but no bolts had sheared), the cheapest I have seen commented in this thread was £2600 I believe, although the local dealer estimated it would be less than this figure. Thankfully I took the decision to take Land Rover Insurance (third year ends in November) and so the fault together with two previous ABS wheel sensor failures have been covered by them during this time. Our local dealer repaired the fault quickly and efficiently as usual, they have always looked after us extremely well since purchase of the vehicle.
 
#361 ·
Failure of steering racks is inevitable, as we clock up the miles - or even worse spend hours driving around town they will fail, often seals will leak, motors will wear out brush gear, sensors will go intermittent, or wearing surfaces will wear. This is acceptable in say 6 or 7 years or over 100,000 miles, personally I would like twice that distance / time, and as most of my mileage is on motorways I might get lucky. I quick search found a couple of companies advertising to refurbish your DS steering rack for less than £900, so they must be failing - probably practiced on Evoques as they have been going for 10 years now and have similar steering gear.

Point to note, the racks are coded to the ECU, so either have yours repaired or pay a dealership to code a replacement rack to the car.

What is not acceptable EVER is for the mounting of steering equipment to fail. In my opinion it should be a recall situation, even if the incidence is low, it is obviously safety related - you wouldn't get through an MOT if the examiner was aware that the steering rack was insecurely mounted.
 
#362 ·
Hi all

I booked my ds 2016 in for a free health check with Beadles Land Rover North West London for this Friday, when I just called them to find out how long they will take as it is a while you wait service, they just told be that my car is also booked in for a recall. I was driving so couldn't make out clearly what they said it is called but they explained it was relating to the electric power steering rack recall..

My original reason for booking it in was as I was getting a slight engine noise for about 5 or 6 seconds when starting the car and then it sounds normal to me.
 
#365 ·
Neilpm said:
County said:
:shock: Will be interesting if thay have issued a steering rack recall, it's taken long enough :roll:
Will post a update after the outcome of the visit. They mentioned it will take a maximum of two hours.
Just called them again, and I can confirm the recall is the changing of the power steering gear bolt attachment.

The recall is not coming up on the land rover website when I check my vin number or on the gov website.
 
#366 ·
Interesting development as it's not on the DVLA site as an official recall (where DVLA have more or less told the manufacturer to recall the car), so it's voluntary recall or a campaign which is something LR seem to have been resisting quite strongly.
 
#367 ·
Dashnine said:
Interesting development as it's not on the DVLA site as an official recall (where DVLA have more or less told the manufacturer to recall the car), so it's voluntary recall or a campaign which is something LR seem to have been resisting quite strongly.
Confirmation that I had my power steering bolts changed under a recall. I have not got any paper work to prove it but two separate people confirmed that the work had been completed. Like I said before I only booked my car in for a free health check and they picked up the recall automatically and told me about it. This was at Beadles Land Rover North West London if anyone's interested in getting it done.
 
#368 ·
Barnsh said:
Dashnine said:
Ops car was delivered prior to the build dates in the recall and therefore subsequent re-recall too.
Yep so maybe yet another recall on the way, ??
I would hope that the work carried out would appear on the VWF, vehicle workshop file, ask the agent for a copy of the VWF as it should show all jobs carried out to date. ;)
 
#369 ·
My 2016 Disco Sport broke down on m11 Friday evening (with my two children 2yo & 9m in car). Warning light suddenly came on saying power steering failure. The steering wheel was completely locked up. Luckily there was nobody in the left hand lane and I was somehow able to manoeuvre to the hard shoulder. Anyway AA towed and inspected car off motorway but couldn’t fix. Car then towed to LR garage. Having initially told me it might be covered by extended warranty they now say it isn’t and will cost £2.5k+ to fix… They say it is an electrical fault not caused by the salt issue discussed here. I have asked them to provide a detailed summary of what’s happened. This is their response -


I have spoken to workshop controller. There is nothing more I can do besides confirm the following.

Investigated power steering.
Read codes B130404 EPAS internal failure.
Updated software but did not rectify fault.
Checked wiring, all ok.
Requires new steering rack due to the module being part of the steering rack.

I have asked what condition the bolts are in, awaiting response… Do you think I have a case to have this fixed FOC? 16 plate has roughly 40k miles on the clock
 
#371 ·
So the extended warranty doesn't cover any electrical issues?
 
#372 ·
Apparently not but as another user on a different forum suggested the electrical fault could have been casued by water ingress The N613 extended warranty covers sheared bolts caused by water ingress....!!! Feeling very frustrated. I have reported to the DVSA and emailed the CEO not sure what else I can do at this point. Any advice gratefully received!
 
#374 ·
I'm not sure if this is the main 'steering rack bolts' thread or not - but just posting to say rumour has it LR are now issuing a UK recall. Owners of affected vehicles will receive a letter...
 
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