Friend of mine owns a 2009 Ford Escape. She drove to work yesterday morning with no trouble, but when she started the car to leave work she had no power steering. Looked at the engine bay and I'm damned if I can see anything that's obviously a power steering reservoir or anything to do with the steering assembly. We think we identified the fuse in the fuse box for the steering but it appeared to require bolts to be removed and we didn't have tools. Drove over to the Ford dealership a block away (no service staff at 5pm on a Saturday) and was confirmed to almost certainly be an electrical problem of some kind.
Ideas or suggestions?
Did the 2009 escape have electric power steering or hydraulic?
wae
SuperDork
3/3/19 8:53 a.m.
I think that's an electric power steering system and if memory serves there was a recall for that problem a while back. I can't remember which Fords it applied to but they had some wiring that would E36 M3 the bed and cause a loss of power steering. First thing I'd check would be to run the VIN through one of those open recall searches and see if that might apply.
stroker
UltraDork
3/3/19 10:23 a.m.
Apparently she had it towed to the nearby dealership late last night so the problem is resolved. Thanks for the help.
JAGwinn
New Reader
3/3/19 10:42 a.m.
Hello stroker, let us know what the cause and solution was...may come in handy to someone here!
GB,
John
In my experience, the steering torque sensor is the failure point on just about all of the column mounted assist units. GM, Ford, Toyota all use what appears to be the same, or a very similar unit. Ford did a recall on the Escapes, but I'm not sure of the year range.
