General: Notchy Power Steering FIX

[Yobbo]

If anyone's had notchy power steering first thing in the morning or from cold consider changing your fuses as I did this last night and it's fixed the issue I was having.

In certain cases it could arguably be dangerous as the fault was present from thew steering wheel at dead centre and it would require some force to turn it before the assist would kick in, not clever when doing a fair speed!

There should be 2/3 fuses associated with the power steering depending on your engine variation, I changed two smaller fuses (no.35 from the engine bay and no.54 from the CEM if I recall rightly).

I found the fuses to show signs of heat discolouration and a surface grime to them. Would probably have been fine to clean up the tips with some emery cloth/sandpaper but just put some new ones in with a squirt of contact cleaner.

I'm fairly certain that the problem fuse was the one in the CEM as the notchy steering seemed to occur with the arrival of winter weather and would disappear once the car had warmed up. When you get in the car and start running the heaters the humidity changes so it seems likely this was related.

It's always worth putting a silica bag or two on the CEM case to absorb localised moisture and checking the state of the fuses in there maybe once a year, it's no surprise that so many people have CEM issues in the winter!