Steering Wheel Sticking Issue on Toyota Prius 2 – Need Help!

Having same problem on Gen2 USA model it's looking to me it's the electric motor above you're knees. I've two assis motors out of other cars in front of me . Need to change out .I can feel problem in my sticking car .it's like assist gear sticks internally.

 

I had a similar problem looked at the steering shaft universal and binding in the rack. I squirted an ounce or two into the steering rack bellows and then cycled the steering full left to full right for a few minutes. Then got under the dash, loosened the shaft universal joint, wiggled and tapped everything with a hammer and tightened it up. End result was not as free turning as the other prius we have but much better.

 

Yeah my problem and possibly this problem going on here doesn't seem to be below the steering yolk It seems to be right there in that thing the motor contraption that my steering wheel shaft goes right through and I'm seeing in my mind I haven't looked at a picture a breakdown of the thing it seems like as I turn the steering wheel it turns a fellow's gear ring round and round that's being assisted by this electric motor so there has to be some slop and some play that gets taken up some kind of way and what have you electric motor is a room for something to stick none of my other three cars do this It's not something I can make happen when I jack up the car and have the steering yolk disconnected at the rack I can turn the wheels and do anything I want all day long just wear myself out but still there's no binding no anything everything is smooth as glass a little kid can grab a wheel and turn the wheels like he's holding the steering wheel sitting in the car but he's outside at the wheel youngster so it's pretty loose and smooth but not to the point with something's wrong it's just everything's working seemingly very well Hook the yolk back up. And going down the road straight ahead and needing to make a correction like I'm going to veer over a half a lane to go around a truck or something It feels like I'm unsticking my steering wheel like I'm going to move to the right I lift up on the wheel at 3:00 to go to 2:00 and there's a click like something has just unstuck like a gate latch is come undone something like that It's kind of unnerving if you're not expecting it not to cause a wreck but kind of weird.

 

Maybe something relevant here:

Sticky or stiff or sticking steering (solved) | PriusChat

 

Yeah I'll be seeing soon because I put rear shocks on the back of this car but I haven't put the fronts on they're laying out here on the ground I can't imagine this sticking is coming from the upper strut bearing or something like that so my other two cars with 400 something thousand and the other one with 276,000 both with factory original front struts no sticking no funny business steer on the dime this '07 car with the stiction has less mileage and more time sitting in parking lots while people were at work kind of interesting but we'll see because I do have struts for it that I was going to put in anyway I've already done the hubs. And at the time I had it all apart everything seems to turn manually by me turning the wheels literally by grabbing the wheel itself and turning while the car is up in the air a little bit or even half a droop half on the ground half in the air tires touching the ground no problem to turn left and right all you want and then when I remove the electronic assist box from this '09 wreck that I have it doesn't have the slop in it that the one in the 07 car seems to have in it it's right up behind my steering wheel this sticking business it seems like it it really does so I have two different assist motor assemblies there's two different names of companies that make them for the early model versus the late I have them both sitting here on the floor.

 

That the wheel turns without sticking when there is no load on the tires suggests to me that the issue is in the power assist. But what do I know, perhaps when the car is on the ground it warps the steering rack slightly or something peculiar like that.