I experienced something very frightening with my 2013 honda accord v6. While driving about 40mph in a straight line I suddenly lost power steering. I had the EPS light show on my dash. I pulled over and restarted the car 2 or 3 times before the power steering came back to normal. It hasn’t happened since. The sudden massive increase in steering wheel force required when EPS shuts off could potentially be very dangerous and I am now frightened to drive this car.
I brought the car to a honda dealer and they were able to confirm that an error code was logged after the incident:
DTC 71-01 Motor Angle Sensor (SIN/COS Signals)
Unfortunately they were not able to diagnose what the root cause of the above issue is. They followed all of the honda-supplied debugging procedures and ran a full reset & diagnostics on the EPS sub system. They weren’t able to find any problems with it and their conclusion that the issue was “intermittent” and that I should continue to drive the car. They made this sound as if it was some freak event that is extremely unlikely to occur.
how did the other drivers solve their issue? did dealer say it could be the body control computer in charge of steering effort? or maybe the rack itself? seems to me you can change both parts and probably fix issue. when it might also be a pinched wire thru body leading to control components. don’t know if steering is controlled by main ECM? or something else?
i don’t know if or how the other drivers solved their issue. The dealer did not give any additional guidance other than they couldn’t find anything wrong.
The steering effort is not “massive” when driving, just parking. The steering is heavy, sure, but the car should be controllable. My opinion, yours may differ.
That said, this is electric power steering. The root cause IS the sensor. The sensor is required for the system to operate and it has its very own electronic “brain” inside the steering system. The only solution is to replace the power steering system as I don’t think the sensor is serviceable by itself or your Honda dealer would have suggested this and just changed it.
It will not fix itself. It will not get better. It will only get worse. It will be expensive to replace the entire power steering rack assembly which is probably why they said to keep driving it. This should not happen on a 4 year old car, but it did, and with a little arm twisting, Honda may pay for some of it.