[Saint]

Hello
I would be incredibly grateful if anybody could give me any help or advice at all.

I have a Antara 2010 plate with a month and a half warrantee left.
I have been having an interment problem with the power steering. What happens is it randomly completely cuts power steering altogether pretty much! My partner cannot control the car and I can just about drive it when it does this.It seems to do it mostly when coming of a motorway and coming to a stop going down through the geers it will just completely cut somtimes just for a moment other times for 5 mins.
Have taken it to various garages and is booked in at my local vauxhall garage for this Wednesday.but it never does it when they drive it and they always say they can't do anything about it until it does, and wiyh only a month or so left on my warrantee I'm pretty much cracking it!,

Any advice would be helpfull

Thanks in advance
Joe

 

[Andrewberry]

Don't know about vauxhall, but my last car was a megane, and once a fault has been looked at and logged it is covered for a period after warranty expires, hope this puts mind at rest a little, worth asking dealership when it's in

 

[Grumps]

Welcome to the forum.

The fact that the fault has been raised before the end of the warranty period should mean you are covered but then again we are talking about Vauxhall. It might be good to make sure they have logged it and then you know you are covered. As for the fault it is very difficult to tell and I havent heard of anyone else having it.

 

[tdejan]

Hi Saint,I had a previous experience (however with different car): check the connections of the car battery. If the connectors on the car battery are loosen, then the servo pump will not have enough power to run the servo/steering.
again, this may not be the case here, but no harm in checking.

 

[Dave47]

I thought that the power steering on the Antara was hydraulic not electrical, although I could be wrong. If I am right then I don't understand how loose batter terminals would cause the pump to malfunction. If I am wrong then yes a definite possibility, although I would have thought that it would also throw up other electrical problems.I sympathise, I had a Hyundai Tuscon that developed an engine management fault but only when towing the caravan, dealer could not fix it as it was not there when they had it, Hyundai customer services were not interested and just kept saying take it to the dealer they will fix it and like you the warranty was fast running out. Only solution was to change the car, and look what I bought into.

 

[ChrisJ]

Some systems have a solenoid valve that is linked to speed. It varies the effort applied by the PAS. So if that malfunctions you could get 'full to no' assistance variances when driving. Unlikely to be the pump itself. More like a control valve as described.

 

[Paxo]

Hello, my antara's doing the exact same! Did you manage to fix?

 

[paulfs68]

Just to concur with Andrewberry & Grumps, it is well worth formally recording the date of the fault with Vauxhall, I would suggest with both the dealer & Vauxhall direct - I tend to email confirmations of telephone calls or dealer discussions.Had a significant fault with my SEAT Ibiza, was staring down the barrel of a £900 repair bill as I was "out-of-warranty", that was until I gently pointed them both to my previous emailreporting the fault some 2weeks before Warranty expiration!
Weren't my fault they couldn't book it in when I first reportedthe problem - successfully repaired under warranty, all thanks to a 30sec email.

Best of luck.

 

[kf313096]

Hi
Hope you have sorted the issue , I had the same issue with sudden loss of power steering main under braking coming down from high speed . at first thought It was myimagination. but it continued to happen occasionally . Dealer could not find the fault . I then insisted they contacted Vauxhall tech and they were told it is the steering pump - the valve controlling the fluid flow built into the pump .

This was a lot of money (£600-700) and I was just out of warranty . So I complained to Vauxhall asking ,if they new of a dangerous fault such as this why were we not informed andall models were not recalled - could not get an answer to this but I did get the pump for free - just paid for labour

 

[kf313096]

see my post re steering issue