Power Steering Issues

[JSloman]

Hi Guys,

Iv'e recently been having power steering issues on my 1.2 Ibiza FR 2014 (seems to be a common issue with these). So i started with the battery all connections where fine and the battery didn't seem to be an issue, i then checked all the fuses and they were also fine, so that led me to look at the rack and the pump itself. Upon reading other forum uploads i decided to replace the pump because i could not hear it when moving the wheel. It seemed changing the pump had worked as it restored my power steering! the yellow light that appears on the dash had gone too!

Until 2 weeks later (now) it has failed again and the light is back on. I cannot hear the noise of the pump working- being a new pump surely it is not this again, I am thinking its something to do with the electrics but before i go investigating i wondered if anyone had something similar occur in there Ibiza and how they have managed to sort it.

Thanks in advance guys.

 

[RADIOTWO]

It sounds like a battery issue,how many miles a day do you drive the car? and what did you do to check out the battey
in the first place

 

[RUM4MO]

I can understand you taking what looked like the sure route to sort this out yourself, but doing that without checking for any stored fault codes might just have been what has now made you think that the "parts canon" needs to be fired again. Apart from visual inspections nothing beats reading fault codes, okay reading fault codes are not a one stop fix, but finding out what the steering system things is wrong does generally put you into a better position to sort things out.

Battery, like said above, checking the charging system over and the batteries state of health sometimes gives you another cheaper area to look at to sort out issues with a very heavy power user like these electro-hydraulic steering systems.

I have a CTEK battery tester and it has been very handy for checking battery health, it is designed by Midtronics who are considered to be one of the best designers of modern battery health testers, if your car has Stiart/Stop and so an EFB battery, it maybe well be running out of life depending on how you use your car.

 

[JSloman]

Before this pandemic the car was used regularly i would say around 13k a year, now i only use it about 50 miles a week. When i started out i tested the currency and everything seemed okay, i then removed the battery and but in a 2016 1.6 fiesta ST battery - which is much more powerful and would've supported the car more then it needed. I have a cheap £40 fault code reader but it picks up nothing (of course i tried this before anything).

 

[RUM4MO]

The normal annual mileage sounds high enough and using a substitute bigger battery did not sort things, hum.

Yes the cheaper code readers will only talk to the Engine's ECU and even then only hand over emissions related codes typically. Scan tools like VCDS can talk to all the car's smart controllers and decode the extended VW Group's faults.