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Sudden Loss of Power Steering WHEN DRIVING

VFSV6FORME

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I bought up this issue to a Holden Dealer north of Brisbane only months ago whilst getting a oil leak fixed and the Service man at Beecham Holden said they had not been notified about this issue or even if it exist.
 

SnowDoggyDogg

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Plausible deniability. They're foking twats to deal with really. It's such a dangerous thing to have happen to you that there is no way they shouldn't be recalling this fault.


I bought up this issue to a Holden Dealer north of Brisbane only months ago whilst getting a oil leak fixed and the Service man at Beecham Holden said they had not been notified about this issue or even if it exist.
 

Skylarking

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From what i’ve Read Holden spent engineers time investigating this issue which was first seen with USA police vehicles which were operating 20 hours per day. It was all to do with cyclic movement of the assembly causing fretting corrosion of some connector pins. I can’t say i’m familiar with the electric power steering assembly myself and I’ve only looked at diagrams and read on about this issue on the www.

It seems solutions were developed by Holden starting with cheapest; apply dielectric grease to pins, to applying epoxy on the connector to vehicles in field (to reduce flex and vibration to parts), to modification of the components resulting in new part numbers fitted to new vehicles and retrofitted to delivered vehicles as part of the USA recall. How it unfolded down under is anyone’s guess but I think taxi drivers were the first to have the problem and I can not find an Australian recall notice on the accc web site for this issue (so suspect it is a TSB).

But i’d expect manufacturers would not blindly replace parts to avoid diagnosis.

Sadly the complete story seems to be defined in bits a pieces in various publications around the www and not in one consolidated place. So i’ll again bang on about us Aussie’s needing better access to TSB’s and recall notices as dealer service is **** and we are sometimes left exposed with our vehicles in a dangerous state. We can blame our government and the ACCC for this situation.

@RockDAhouse if this repair cost you, i’d document the problem you had in a nice letter of claim and send it to Holden Australia with a clear statement of your demands ($$) and a time frame for them to respond in the affirmative before you take the issue to small claims. Clearly, in my mind (and I could be wrong) the repairer should have had access to TSB’s and recall notices and thus diagnosed the issue as being Holden’s problem and hand balled it to them. But bacause such info is problematic or time consuming to get hold of, maybe your non Holden repairer was unable to advise appropriately (but I hope you kept the old parts). In such instances, Holden has a moral duty to pay for your repairs even when done by non Holden repairers. It can take a little time to form the docs in an appropriate way and there is a cost to lodge a small claim so you need to weigh up the benefits to you. But if Holden is too sack to send anyone to the small claims court then the usual process is a summary judgment against Holden. But likely Holden won’t like to fight this issue over $400-$500 on something that is a clear recall os. However it’s your call if you want to bang heads with manufacturers.

Oh, and not knowing the electrical circuits involved, fretting corrosion implies intermittent connections and disconnections which could possibly compromise parts on either end of the connector, so if Holden states the recall was on part A and not the part B that you replaced, i’d ask for documentary proof that part B which is electrically connected to part A can’t be damaged by fretting corrosion. If they did their investigations of the problem correctly, such internal docs would discuss such issues (and if one goes to court there is a discovery process though i’m not sure if it’s done in small claims).

My vote (and I don’t have one) is take them to the cleaners and hammer them for all our sakes :p
 

Skylarking

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Plausible deniability. They're foking twats to deal with really. It's such a dangerous thing to have happen to you that there is no way they shouldn't be recalling this fault.
Holden Australia has no plausible deniability on this issue since they identified the problem as being recall worthy in litigious USofA.

So, if someone crashes and deaths are involved, even down under, the lawyers would be lining up to ‘help’ the injured against a multinational that doesn’t care about selling knowingly faulty and dangerous products. I can hear the lawyers hands rubbing in expectation of the windfall :eek:
 

killingwithasmile

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So has anyone had this repaired outside of manufacturers warranty at no cost? I bought a 2014 ssv last year and just had this happen over the weekend, I have dealership coverage but would rather this be Holden’s responsibility
 

Pablito

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Read back through the forums. There's this one and another 1 or 2 threads on it. I'd say there's been 4 or 5 people in the last 6 months who have posted to say their out if warranty cars had new racks installed at no cost.
 

somfman

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So has anyone had this repaired outside of manufacturers warranty at no cost? I bought a 2014 ssv last year and just had this happen over the weekend, I have dealership coverage but would rather this be Holden’s responsibility
Yep - last week. 2013 CalaisV. I had the original fix done in 2015 then just recently stared getting the 'Power steering Fail' message, so booked it in. They verified that the fix had been done, took a day to look into it again and then declared that I'd have to rebook it in to have the steering rack replaced. I was ready to hit them with Australian Consumer Law if necessary, but from the outset they said the work would be done at no cost to me under warranty. The rack was replaced in a day and so far all is good.
 

Banjo79

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I got my car look at by a local mechanic, he diagnose the fault and said nothing to do with the steering rack. Is to do with the steering angle position sensor and power steering module. These 2 parts cost 280 from holden + 3 hours labour cost. Been driving 3 days now and no error message popping up so far. Well, I certainly hope this fix the issue. Will update you guys in a week time and see how it goes.
Yep - last week. 2013 CalaisV. I had the original fix done in 2015 then just recently stared getting the 'Power steering Fail' message, so booked it in. They verified that the fix had been done, took a day to look into it again and then declared that I'd have to rebook it in to have the steering rack replaced. I was ready to hit them with Australian Consumer Law if necessary, but from the outset they said the work would be done at no cost to me under warranty. The rack was replaced in a day and so far all is good.
Good to hear there are some decent dealerships out there. So does the steering rack replacement include the replacement of steering angle position sensor and power steering module as has been replaced by RockDAhouse above?
RockDAhouse, any news?
 

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It’s not not a matter of “decent dealerships” but of “knowledgeably dealerships” and the later depends in part on Holden.

The tech doing the work either has the knowledge of all TSB’s and recalls related to your car, and good fault finding skills, or he can’t remember what he had for lunch (and everything inbetween).

The problem is that Holden has not run a recall on this issue and who knows if a TSB for this exists, so the techs may not know. If Holden won’t support the dealer tech, then we are stuffed.

Really, I don’t know why the press and the regulators haven’t been all over this.

Maybe it’s time people having this issue lodged a safety report with DOTARS @ https://infrastructure.gov.au/vehicles/reporting/index.aspx

Maybe then this becomes a recall and is handled in a better way for all concerned.
 

saroadie

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It’s not not a matter of “decent dealerships” but of “knowledgeably dealerships” and the later depends in part on Holden.

The tech doing the work either has the knowledge of all TSB’s and recalls related to your car, and good fault finding skills, or he can’t remember what he had for lunch (and everything inbetween).

The problem is that Holden has not run a recall on this issue and who knows if a TSB for this exists, so the techs may not know. If Holden won’t support the dealer tech, then we are stuffed.

Really, I don’t know why the press and the regulators haven’t been all over this.

Maybe it’s time people having this issue lodged a safety report with DOTARS @ https://infrastructure.gov.au/vehicles/reporting/index.aspx

Maybe then this becomes a recall and is handled in a better way for all concerned.


Perhaps with the cessation of local manufacturing and the consequent loss of suppliers, there is insufficient supply of racks to replace all those which would be affected by a recall?
 
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