Power Steering Light with C1513, Recommended Suppliers for Rack?

Unfortunately, there is not much data about this question since most have had it replaced via the recall.

 

The worst they could say is no.

 

A few years ago I was totally about to pull the trigger on a Cardone 1A-1000 just when I got Toyota's letter about the warranty extension. As it happens I've never seen one close up and I don't know how they go about remanufacturing it, but if you try one, I'm sure a lot of PriusChat readers will be interested in how well it seems to work for you.

-Chap

 

EBay has remanufactured OEM units for as low as $290.

 

Hello all. I am new to the forums having just purchased a used first gen with 225k miles on it. I was worried about steering rack problems cropping up as well at that mileage. This weekend, my wife was driving it and got scared when she went to make a right and lost all power assist. Glad she was going slow at the time. I too would be interested in anyone's experience with any "rebuilt" units.

 

The assist really only matters when going slow - steering is easy at speed. The assist is programmed to taper away at speed anyway, and honestly while mine was on the fritz I could really scarcely tell it had gone out until I came to a stop and tried to park or something. Cruising, I would only notice that it felt a tiny bit heavier, which, to be honest, I sort of liked.

So really, I wouldn't harbor any safety concerns about it cutting out at speed.

You will be happier when it's fixed though.

-Chap

 

I also became pretty sure over time that the wet-dog-shake happened less often after I got in the habit of holding the wheel more steadily (not a white-knuckle death grip or anything, just having both hands on it most of the time with the fingers comfortably closed). It didn't seem only that this dampened the shaking when it happened; it seemed the shaking happened less. From back around that time there's a post where I was speculating about how that might be (using a lot of vague handwaving and not a single Nyquist plot). My explanation could be bunk, but the observation seemed real.

-Chap

 

Hey Chap I came across a garage that claims to take apart the PS rack and clean up the electrical surfaces. He has a nice write up with pics. Looks like a good DIYer could do the same. Maybe that is you? The priuschat site wont let me post the url though as I am new here, sorry. Maybe I can get around that restriction eventually.

 

I have also noticed that if I hold the wheel tightly the shaking goes away in a few seconds. The shaking also only happens on cold/ cool mornings. With a afternoon sun warming no problems. I am rather convinced that the problem is lubrication stiffening inside the PS rack control box. That and/or the tin wiskers people chat about. I read one guy takes his apart and cleans up everything electrical with Jiffy Bright electronics cleaner/ preservative. Wish I had the guts to do that someday, maybe. Lots of fragile things in there is mess up if clumsy though. LoL

 

I've been known to post about using Jiffy Bath (a product from GC Chemical for cleaning and lubricating contacts), so you might be remembering me for that part.

I also did buy a cheap rack from a salvage yard just to see if I could figure out how it comes apart, and I did post pictures and instructions for getting down to the torque sensor, so that might have been me too.

Yes, a better grip on the steering wheel tames the problem. Just physics: what's happening is the whole steering assist system is becoming a simple feedback oscillator. A bit of electrical noise in the torque sensor makes the computer say "ah, driver is steering left!" so it sends "left!" to the steering motor, which makes the torque sensor say "right!" so the computer amplifies that and sends "right!" to the motor, so the sensor says "left!" ....

Like in a lecture hall where somebody gets microphone feedback, there are just certain pitches that lead to sustained feedback because the system resonates. When your arms are more tightly coupled to the steering wheel, it makes the whole system a bit heavier and changes the resonant frequency, so the feedback quickly dies away.

Nope, just electrical noise from the torque sensor contacts. If you have a Gen 1, you have lots of parts in the car that use mechanical potentiometers as sensors: the steering torque, the accelerator pedal position, and the positions of all three HVAC air doors. If you keep the car long enough, all of those sensors may eventually give you the same kind of noisy behavior. It's the steering gear jitters when the steering sensor does it, the Big Hand Syndrome when it's the accelerator pedal, and "is there a mouse in my heater?" when it's one of the HVAC door positioners. (The last diagnosis can be trickier if you park in a place where you really could have a mouse in your heater.)

They all can be fixed the same way, by getting down to the dirty contacts and cleaning them. It's cheap and easy for the HVAC doors (at least the ones on the easy-to-get-to side of the heater), a little harder for the accelerator sensor (it's glued together), but quite a big job for the steering gearbox. It is not that hard to take apart once you have it out, but removing and replacing it is long demanding mechanical work.

"Tin whiskers" are one way sensitive electrical contacts can go flaky, but not the only way. Nice thing about whiskers is there might be a way to 'burn' them away without having to get down to the contacts and clean them. Probably won't hurt anything to try (within reason), but I don't know that I've ever seen a "yeah I tried that and it totally solved the problem" here either.

In later Prius generations, Toyota moved all those sensors to technologies that aren't sensitive to flaky electrical contacts.