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Re-Power Steering recall.

426Cuda

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I received three safety recall letters yesterday. Two for work SV6's and one for my Redline. In an uncanny coincidence, on the way home from work the power steering fault occurred in my Redline. Then again this morning. It's never happened before.
I can report that the steering was very heavy from about 30° off centre. However it was drivable and completely safe. I had a friend take a video of me steering it with one hand, just to demonstrate that the car can be steered when this fault occurs. I turned two 90° corners at about 20kph, with one hand on the wheel. I am quite strong and it was quite hard to turn, but it's still possible. With two hands it's heavy but fine. I am sure my Wife could do it to and she is not a big person. My point is that there was no risk of me losing control of the car.
I'm wondering if I can use this to have the whole rack replaced, rather than just the motor or module? I'll be booking it in on Monday.
received_2588870271399592.jpeg
 

Skylarking

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^ Cuda, would you think your grandma could drive safely with such a failure? if she had partly deflated 60 aspect tyres? I’d think no and definitely no.

As to having the complete rack replaced, if a kit of parts is not available for your car but a full rack was, then you’d expect you should be able to push for a full rack replacement.

As is, ACL requires prompt repairs but oddly this aspect isn’t being pushed by the regulators with the takata airbag issues or other slow recalls; how is regulatory capture spelt... ACCC?
 

426Cuda

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^ Cuda, would you think your grandma could drive safely with such a failure? if she had partly deflated 60 aspect tyres? I’d think no and definitely no.

As to having the complete rack replaced, if a kit of parts is not available for your car but a full rack was, then you’d expect you should be able to push for a full rack replacement.

As is, ACL requires prompt repairs but oddly this aspect isn’t being pushed by the regulators with the takata airbag issues or other slow recalls; how is regulatory capture spelt... ACCC?
I'm not sure about partly deflated tyres Skylarking, but other than that, said Gramdma would get home ok. I'm confident of that. But, She'd probably just park up safely and call for help.
I always wondered what might happen if the fault occurred, say heading down the Clyde Mountain for example. I now know, and personally I wouldn't be too concerned. As has been stated before, the steering is similar to a car with hydraulic PS that has thrown a belt. It still works and at speed is easy enough to steer. I was driving at 80-100kph with bends in the road with little extra effort. It's when you're going slow that a great deal of effort is required to turn. It's certainly not enough to stop me driving it though. Others might take a different view.
 

Skylarking

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^ Only problem I see is that we don’t know enough about the failure modes and how the EPS control system works. I don’t know what wires are impacted by fretting corrosion, what signals they carry, how the control system interprets these signals and whether the fault can cause the steering to stiffen up or actually force the steering wheel in an undesirable direction. There could be multiple failure modes.... All we know is that there is a lack of public information on the technical aspects of this fault o_O

Keep in mind that some people have stated their steering was fighting them (including one taxi driver early on within this saga). The fact your failure was easy to handle is great for you but another failure may be different... I don’t know... Probably the regulators don’t have the full picture (remember the ignition key saga in US?).

What I suspect is that if it wasn’t a safety concern, it would have been handled via a service campaign rather than a recall. The fact it’s a recall should say enough :rolleyes:

Ps: your grandma sounds wise to parking safely on the side of the road and call for help :)
 

Anthony121

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I received three safety recall letters yesterday. Two for work SV6's and one for my Redline. In an uncanny coincidence, on the way home from work the power steering fault occurred in my Redline. Then again this morning. It's never happened before.
I can report that the steering was very heavy from about 30° off centre. However it was drivable and completely safe. I had a friend take a video of me steering it with one hand, just to demonstrate that the car can be steered when this fault occurs. I turned two 90° corners at about 20kph, with one hand on the wheel. I am quite strong and it was quite hard to turn, but it's still possible. With two hands it's heavy but fine. I am sure my Wife could do it to and she is not a big person. My point is that there was no risk of me losing control of the car.
I'm wondering if I can use this to have the whole rack replaced, rather than just the motor or module? I'll be booking it in on Monday.
View attachment 207955

Oh I mentioned this a few times on here with my first VF failing but one person still insists that it is life threatening and dangerous. It is harder to steert but you can still drive the car. You ain't going to lose control of the car by the car suddenly shooting off to the right or left.

Glad someone else has posted the car is still able to be steered.
 

Anthony121

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^ Only problem I see is that we don’t know enough about the failure modes and how the EPS control system works. I don’t know what wires are impacted by fretting corrosion, what signals they carry, how the control system interprets these signals and whether the fault can cause the steering to stiffen up or actually force the steering wheel in an undesirable direction. There could be multiple failure modes.... All we know is that there is a lack of public information on the technical aspects of this fault o_O

Keep in mind that some people have stated their steering was fighting them (including one taxi driver early on within this saga). The fact your failure was easy to handle is great for you but another failure may be different... I don’t know... Probably the regulators don’t have the full picture (remember the ignition key saga in US?).

What I suspect is that if it wasn’t a safety concern, it would have been handled via a service campaign rather than a recall. The fact it’s a recall should say enough :rolleyes:

Ps: your grandma sounds wise to parking safely on the side of the road and call for help :)

And you are assuming all the time with this EPS failure. Yes it does lose the assistance but you can still steer the car. Like I said all along I drove my car 35 Km's along the freeway with it failed. It just lost the assistance.

As for the taxi driver, maybe he wasn't holding the steering wheel. Not much different than having a tyre blowout...
 

Skylarking

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^ The EPS is designed to add or subtract torque to the steering shaft via the electric motor. It has a torque sensor and likely other sensors as input and determines how much torque needs to be added or subtracted to the shaft. In that way it can provide the driver assistance and feel that is desired. It is a classic control system theory issue. What the fretting corrosion does and how it is interpreted by the control system is anyone’s guess.

As is, Holden has not provided any technical documents on the failure mode nor any detail about the control system itself (other than treating it as a black box). However, we have a recall document with a title that trivialises the issue. With such a lack of info, assumptions are the only thing left to do.

Obviously you are free to assume that the only failure type is one where any EPS assistance is lost. This iron6 shouldn’t escape you.

You can take the word of a GM subsidiary in the full knowledge that the mother company has had a propensity to hide issues from US regulators, issues like the ignition key saga that resulted in many deaths from US regulators. And I’m sure that’s not the only such issue... or only rogue engineer :p

The ignition switch saga resulted in loss of power (motive power , steering and brake assistance) and the deaths of 124 people. According to your logic, loss of steering assistance shouldn’t cause issue as you can still steer... loss of brake assistance shouldn’t cause issue as you still have vacuum and can safely stop once and with effort many times.... loss of engine power only means you pull over so you are late to where you are going... no deaths, no injuries... yet how many died, how long was the issue hidden from NHTSA? All rhetorical questions.

Oh, and factor the triple issue of power, steering and brakes within the ignition saga. Then factor the US population, and correlate it to the EPS issues in Aus. Doing that thought process and you’d expect maybe 2 to 3 deaths in Aus attributed to EPS failure. When considering Aus yearly road deaths, such would fade into background noise, especially when you consider GM initially attributed only 13 deaths to their key fuckup.

Yes, some, maybe most will have a EPS failure and have little trouble at all... but it’s the unknown within this problem, and to be frank, I don’t trust that we are being told all there is about the failure modes...

What’s a given is that it’s a recall and as such is considered a serious safety issue. And we mustn’t forget that many within the early part of the sudden loss-of power steering when driving thread also had the view it wasn’t an issue and not worth a recall.

Meanwhile, things would be rather different if we had industrial manslaughter legislation on the books within this country. Deceitful and money hungry CEO’s and their management teams would change their ways or could spend a bit of jail time when things are hidden from regulators and people die, all in the name of profit. Pity our polices have no desire to protect the population with such legislation.
 

426Cuda

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No disrespect whatsoever @Skylarking but you are way over thinking this. Is it a safety issue? Yes, absolutely! Should it have been recalled? Yes again, no doubt. Could it result in an accident? I think so. Let's say it happened right before a bend or corner, and you were going in a little quick. You might struggle to adjust to the steering effort required. This could cause you to cross the centerline, or perhaps drop the left front off the edge or clip the kerb for example. Just as a blown tyre could. Although the blown tyre would be a far more difficult issue to deal with I believe. Because the cars handling would change dramatically.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems you are implying that the steering system might suddenly take control of the car or steering away from the driver? As if the auto park feature had been engaged. Steering wildly to the left and or right. With the driver just a helpless passenger as the car drives erraticaly, not responding to the drivers inputs to the steering wheel. If so, this is simply not the case. It is just plain wrong.
As I said, it is simply a loss of power assistance which means far more effort is required to steer the car. The slower you go, the more effort required. But, the driver maintains full control of the car at ALL times. Just as they would in a car with hydraulic assisted steering which had thrown a belt. The car does not get possessed by some electronic gremlin that tries to slam it into the nearest object, despite the futile efforts by the driver.
 

Skylarking

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@426Cuda , to us, EPS is just a black box with a bunch of inputs (including steering shaft torque applied by the driver) and outputs (including torque beings applied to the steering rack by the electric motor). Somewhere in the mix is an algorithm that is used to provide the driver feel based in part on what is occurring at the wheel/road interface. This driver feel is provided by applying torque in both the direction the driver steers as well as in an opposition to driver direction.

By design EPS must fight a small amount with the driver if one expects good feedback. The system also has the ability and strength to apply enough force to turn the wheel where it wants As such a ‘feature’ is made use of in providing the self park system.

EPS is classic control systems theory and faults, heck even driver inputs*, can have an adverse effect on it. It all depends on how well it was tested during design. We don’t really know how the system has been coded and how well it has been tested and more importantly what safeguards are built into it. All we know is that in some instances, a few people have reported extreme difficulty in controlling the vehicle, almost as if vehicle was fighting them. So yes, some possessed gremlin at play trying to run them off the road.

Control systems can be extremely complex and difficult to design and test, even by aircraft manufacturers. It is not unheard of for issues to occur and reoccur due to the nature of the design complexities. Just look at the Jas fighter aircraft that crashed in ‘89 due to pilot induced oscillations where the control system software was found to be at fault. The s/w was fixed yet it crashed again in ‘93 with the same/similar issue. This was not a redneck owned motor vehicle manufacturer, this was a fighter aircraft manufacturer that experienced control systems pilot input issues, twice...

Now put the above in context when thinking of the likely EPS design effort. With that in mind, and stepping away from a fixed view that only one EPS fault case exists, is it not feasible that other rarer fault cases exists. As such, is it not feasible that the torque inputs on the problem ’fretting’ connector could result in corrupted input to the control system (rather than just going o/c)? Is it not feasible that such corrupted input is interpreted as driver input and sets off some undesirable assistance?

Its just that I have doubts that the EPS connector failure can only result in one fault case where assistance is always lost. Software design is a bitch where faults can remain hidden for years and years, control systems like EPS, even more so.

Is it overthinking the problem or a lack of trust on my part based previous GM behaviours, or maybe a bit of both. It’s irrelevant as without any voice of concern, too many issues just get swept under the carpet.

I just wonder how many GM managers thought people were driving their cars wrong when discussing the ignition switch issue, in true Apple philosophy :p
 

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I'm not sure about partly deflated tyres Skylarking, but other than that, said Gramdma would get home ok. I'm confident of that. But, She'd probably just park up safely and call for help.

Old fellas like us Cuda remember what it was like to drive without power steering and as heavy as it was with 60 or 50 series tyres it was only a pain when you were stopped and were trying to reverse park.

I'm not going to say were we tougher back than but I'll imply it.



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