Steering holds a left turn?

[FISHTAIL]

Anyone else run into this one? The car will hold a mild left hand turn indefinitely. I discovered this issue on a 200 mile trip home from PA when I was getting tired from the constant effort required to keep the car in the lane.

At first I thought I needed an alignment, until I started trying to troubleshoot. What I found was that the car will track perfectly straight, but if I turn slightly left, it will continue to turn slightly left. Enough so that I can easily turn the wheel into a left hand sweeping turn, let go, and the car will just stay on the road following the turn without issue. What's weird is that it is ONLY left hand turns that work like this. It's perfectly fine turning right, and always returns to center..taking me out of the corner.

I've played with this a bit, and while it's really easy to reproduce this at speed (say, 40-45+), it doesn't want to do it while driving around a parking lot.

The car only has 4500 miles on it, and it's all stock minus the catback, so I'll take it into the dealership eventually, but I would prefer to know a little bit more about the problem before I do.

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[wildcatgoal]

Steering rack is bad. Take it to the dealer, say the car will not return to center. Replicate it for them. Warranty.

 

[FISHTAIL]

Yeah, I know it's warranty. But I'm not going to haul it to the dealer immediately because I don't have the time. It's a huge pita to drop the thing off, move car seats, arrange for someone to get the kids while I take the car over, etc.

I've also never had a rack fail where it will only hold a turn in a single direction. It's almost like the steering assist is holding it there, it feels artificial, not like a mechanical bind. it's hard to describe. Not like my pos old dodge ram, which will easily go in a circle in a parking lot without touching the wheel because the drivers lower ball joint is totally shot. Thanks to Rock Auto, I should have all 4 of the front ball joints replaced in that heap this weekend, which will help facilitate dropping the GT off.

At least I can get the blob that used to be my passenger side pony light replaced while it's in too.

 

[wildcatgoal]

It's an electric steering rack so holding left isn't unheard of.

 

[FISHTAIL]

It's an electric steering rack so holding left isn't unheard of.

Any idea why? Some kind of road crown correction gone awry? I'll post up what they find when it's replaced, but in the meantime...any easy way to reset the module aside from just pulling the battery cable? Yanking a fuse perhaps? Even if it only buys me a week or normal operation while I get my backup vehicle fixed I'd be fine with that.

At least this car isn't in danger of throwing a wheel like my Dodge is.

 

[Stangman21]

I got the same issue. I thought it was alignment issue too. It occurred later than you though. Maybe when I hit around 5,000 miles. thanks [MENTION=25527]FISHTAIL[/MENTION] for asking this question and for [MENTION=21494]wildcatgoal[/MENTION] answering it!

 

[FISHTAIL]

I got the same issue. I thought it was alignment issue too. It occurred later than you though. Maybe when I hit around 5,000 miles. thanks @FISHTAIL for asking this question and for @wildcatgoal answering it!

Yeah no problem. I just hope the EPAS is the issue. Frustratingly, the car wouldn't do it this morning...I toggled through the steering modes and it was fine my entire drive into work. So I'm going to have a hard time getting it fixed if I can't get it to reliably reproduce the problem.

Seems like one of those things I will have to live with for a bit until it does it nearly all the time.

 

[Stangman21]

Yeah no problem. I just hope the EPAS is the issue. Frustratingly, the car wouldn't do it this morning...I toggled through the steering modes and it was fine my entire drive into work. So I'm going to have a hard time getting it fixed if I can't get it to reliably reproduce the problem.

Seems like one of those things I will have to live with for a bit until it does it nearly all the time.

For it to kick in and exaggerate it more..it occurs on my car when I take a hard left. Then the steering wheel does give out and get "stuck" at the left position. When it stops raining here in NorCal bay area I'll be heading to my dealership nearby.

 

[FISHTAIL]

For it to kick in and exaggerate it more..it occurs on my car when I take a hard left. Then the steering wheel does give out and get "stuck" at the left position. When it stops raining here in NorCal bay area I'll be heading to my dealership nearby.

Interesting. Mine was doing it on slight turns only...if I turned in harder it would "wake up" and return to center. So I could get the car to follow a slow sweeping left hand corner, but if I turned in harder and let go, it would straighten up.

My friend had suggested it could be bogus input from the angle sensor causing the car to think it's going straight (ie, fighting a heavy crown) when in fact it's not.

 

[Tobey]

For it to kick in and exaggerate it more..it occurs on my car when I take a hard left. Then the steering wheel does give out and get "stuck" at the left position. When it stops raining here in NorCal bay area I'll be heading to my dealership nearby.

Did you ever take it to the dealer and get it fixed? Mine does it occasionally also.

 

[Kong76]

You bought the Nascar edition.

 

[CTH621]

You bought the Nascar edition.

hahaha

Yeah mine does mildly too. But it's too mild to have the whole rack replaced.

 

[FISHTAIL]

Did you ever take it to the dealer and get it fixed? Mine does it occasionally also.

Finally dropped it off last night actually. I'll update the thread with what they find.

 

[FISHTAIL]

hahaha

Yeah mine does mildly too. But it's too mild to have the whole rack replaced.

How mild? Mine drives me crazy on long trips, I'm constantly having to stay on top of where the car is wondering. But I can go around a gradual bend, turn the wheel and let go..the car will stay in the corner without issue.

 

[PatrickGT]

My Z4 does that with its electric power steering, it's way out of warranty though so I just kind of deal with it.

It also feels like it has "steps" in the gearing just off center, but nowhere else. Annoying as all F.

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