2013 cmax no power steering

[KerryK]

Hi. I'm so stressed. My 62 plate cmax has decided to give up on me. This is the second time it's happened after a 2.5 hour journey. Last time it happened I got out of the car for about 15 minutes. Got back in and it started beeping at me. No power steering on the dash. I had no choice other than to drive it home. It took 3.5 hours. I took it to the auto electrician and they couldn't find a fault. I went to pick it up and it worked when I started it. This was 4 months ago. Never happened again until today. Again around a 2 and a half hour journey. Was out of the car for 20 mins, got in and the same beeping and no power steering on the dash. Has anyone else had thus problem and what did you do? I've plugged it into the code reader again and there's no fault showing up. Any advice would be appreciated 😊

[KerryK]

So I've been looking on here and tried looking for water ingress but there seems to be none anywhere. Disconnected a few wires and reconnected but still has the power steering loss. Still no fault showing up when I scan it.

[jackylad]

I've had this happen to me three times in the last 7 months with my 2015 tdci cmax with less than 50k

Code reader found an error "High friction in the power steering control module" Error would not clear but once the ignition was turned off after scanning and the engine started the power steering was back to normal.

On the three occasions it's occurred it was after driving around 150 miles. Twice in the last week both travelling to Scotland where recovery got it going after I explained what had happened the first time and then again on the return journey when it failed but I kept it running knowing it would be much tougher to wrestle it home if I turned off the engine. Again my local garage scanned it, found the same error code which wouldn't clear but again back to normal.

Coincidentally my stop start wasn't operating which pointed to a failing battery which I've changed (original battery still in car) and now works as it should.

The rack is a known weakness on c max from 2010 to 2015 caused by water ingress. In the meantime I'm keeping my fingers crossed.