I had an odd situation today where I took it in and ended up having to put 4 new tires on it. When I picked it up and started it, the steering wheel with exclamation mark was on solid and it had no power steering. I got it home (steering was much harder) and a few more power cycles and no change. Light would come on solid and stay on. After a bit of Internet reading I decided to try disconnecting the battery and this seemed to fix it. After an idle relearn (from disconnecting the battery) all seems well again. Is this something that can happen with the electronic power steering ECU? I'm a little leery to turn this over to my son (he uses it at college) without some driving history with no trouble, but I wonder if it is more of a power on failure than a driving down the road failure.

 

I had it happen once about 8 years ago. Power steering just went out one morning, took it to my mechanic and we figured the power steering ECU had failed. Since it would take a few days to order one in I drove it to work and home and the next morning it was working fine again. Haven't had a single issue with it since.

 

Thanks Greg; it has been working solid since I disconnected/reconnected the power so hoping it was an odd one off thing.