Power Steering Fault

[EurIng]

My A5 Sportback has electromechanical power steering - I have had two on-screen warnings about 'Power Steering Failure', one red and the other amber. These have only occurred when sitting in stationary traffic for long periods in warm dry ambient conditions. The steering is workable but feels very heavy.

Each time I've parked up, switched the ignition off and restarted - the fault has cleared and the system is back to normal.

Any ideas as to what is causing this and how to diagnose or fix it ?

All advice will be appreciated - I'm reluctant to take it to the Audi dealership as historically they have been expensive and useless. 

[Magnet]

Hello Barry,

Always difficult to diagnose such issues from afar. What I can say say is that I, and a number of owners of the same marque, have experienced similar temporary issues with non Audi s (large !Removed! cats!). Difference:- these problems show up on cold mornings and as you say are easily rectified by switching off and back on again. My reasoning is that battery voltage is not up to par on the cold mornings. 

Yours and hot summer days. Air con on? 

If it were mine:- I would do two things to start with - get the battery condition checked when you are sure it is near to fully charged ( it should be serviceable at 5 years old if it's the original one, but...)  and also get the alternator output checked. 

It might also be worth testing if this problem occurs when you have the air con. switched off. 

Perhaps you could let us know how you get on. 

Kind regards,

Gareth.

[Magnet]

You've got to laugh at some of the reasoning of the computer programming employed by our hard working administrators and moderators when you try to find some logic in . !Removed! words. I was trying to avoid using the word  Jaguar (am I allowed to mention such a make on here!?) so used.  large p u s s y cat instead, but the middle word was offensive to the programme. Yes, of course, it was always a giggle at schoolboy ages, but.......? 

What bit of programming logic considers that word to be offensive, yet allows the use of abbreviations of totally unacceptable swear words and words which could offend folks who follow religion? An absolute daftness. 

Apologies, Trevor, SteveQ and PaulA6 - I genuinely feel your hard work sometimes goes unnoticed, when it certainly should not -  but how about zapping all of these unacceptable abbreviated swear words which escape the net. My removed word just brings a smile to the morning, so that must be good.

Keep up the good work folks,

Kind regards,

Gareth.

[EurIng]

Thanks Gareth for your helpful reply......although I did read your first paragraph several times and couldn't quite understand the reference to 'cats', thinking you were referring to catalytic converters!

My thoughts on the steering problem so far are:

Earth fault

Water ingress in wiring connectors

Defective sensor

Software requires update

I had thought of reading fault codes to see if that tells me anything, but intermittent faults don't always show up and the dealership technicians are often at a loss to explain the problem.

Kind regards,

Barry

[Magnet]

Hello Barry, 

Apologies about the first paragraph confusion! - see later post. 

Of course, any one of your list of possible causes may be the answer. 

Those who sadistically!  follow some of my responses will confirm that my advice follows a theme of eliminating the basics (generally without much cost) - in your case battery condition and alternator output - before moving on to more complex possibilities. For right or for wrong, that is my old school logic. 

Reading fault codes is another follow on, but it surprises me how many people treat these codes as the be all and end all answer, and it is often overlooked that the codes shown cannot always be isolated so that they can be interpreted as causes or effects. 

Good luck in sorting it out.

Kind regards,

Gareth.

[Steve Q]

6 hours ago, Magnet said:

You've got to laugh at some of the reasoning of the computer programming employed by our hard working administrators and moderators when you try to find some logic in . !Removed! words. I was trying to avoid using the word  Jaguar (am I allowed to mention such a make on here!?) so used.  large p u s s y cat instead, but the middle word was offensive to the programme. Yes, of course, it was always a giggle at schoolboy ages, but.......? 

What bit of programming logic considers that word to be offensive, yet allows the use of abbreviations of totally unacceptable swear words and words which could offend folks who follow religion? An absolute daftness. 

Apologies, Trevor, SteveQ and PaulA6 - I genuinely feel your hard work sometimes goes unnoticed, when it certainly should not -  but how about zapping all of these unacceptable abbreviated swear words which escape the net. My removed word just brings a smile to the morning, so that must be good.

Keep up the good work folks,

Kind regards,

Gareth.

Well Gareth, I'm highly offended of you for using the word Jaguar on here and do not feel it is appropriate, haha! (Only joking!). 

Truthfully I'm not sure exactly who has dealt with the programming but it's something I'll discuss with Trevor. Are you wanting us to get rid of abreviated "rude" words or getting rid of the "!removed!" Icon for all words? I think the latter would be harder to do so in order to not to allow any members to get offended. But thankfully we have a great bunch of members and luckily this type of behavior doesn't happen often. 

I too had a chuckle when a new member joined and his name had been "! removed!" As his name was d.i.c.k. I only knew this was his name because of his email address! 

Thank you for your kind words Gareth and it's nice for our hard work to be appreciated. We definitely do try our best for all our members 🙂

But we should be saying thank you to you to Gareth as your advice and guidance towards members is greatly appreciated by all of us on the admin/moderator team 🙂

Cheers

Steve

[Magnet]

Well done Steve for being critical of me mentioning the marque starting with J on here. Shouldn't be allowed, but someone has to keep the Tata family in pocket money! This our 3rd one in something like 30 years, and I must confess to even having a brief John Prescott moment a couple of years back when I actually had two! They gave me some tablets for it, and I'm back to just the normal one now. 

Many thanks for having a look at the Removed bits. Personally I think it's pretty good as it is, and I'm sure it filters out unacceptable 4 letter words etc. What it doesn't seem to do is to filter out the abreviations for some of these words e.g. WTx. etc. I just wondered if this could be looked at and these things also dealt with as !Removed! 

Apologies for adding some extra work, but might be worth having a look at as time allows. Perhaps the Forum Rules could also be updated and request that posters do not use abreviations of unacceptable words. 

Many thanks again Steve,

Kind regards,

Gareth.

[Steve Q]

Lol 😂 glad they got you on medication for it Gareth. We certainly don't want two John Prescotts around! 😂

Thanks, I have mentioned the raised issue with Trevor yesterday so we'll see what we can do 🙂

not a problem Gareth, it's what us mods and admins are here for. It's not caused additional work, honestly. Updating the rules is a simple yet effective temporary measure 🙂

cheers

Steve

[Magnet]

Maintaining a sense of humour is an essential part of the day Steve! 

Apologies for drifting well off the original topic Barry. It's not usually this bad. 

We trust you are able to get to the bottom of the issue.

Good luck and kind regards,

Gareth. 

[Steve Q]

1 hour ago, Magnet said:

Maintaining a sense of humour is an essential part of the day Steve! 

Apologies for drifting well off the original topic Barry. It's not usually this bad. 

We trust you are able to get to the bottom of the issue.

Good luck and kind regards,

Gareth. 

Definitely Gareth, I do my best with having a good sense of humor. However It does have a habit of coming out at inappropriate times for rare occasions! 

Yes, appologies Barry. Please keep us posted on how you get on.

Cheers

Steve