Fusion power steering saga

Claymore

Claymore

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I thought a few here might be interested in my power steering saga.

I have a 2015 Ford Fusion. Great car, lots of features, good performance and handling. It's got an electronic power steering rack.

We had that massive hailstorm in late December, and I was caught in it; I was driving through streams of water across the road, and had very little visibility.

The next day, I went out. I got home, and as I wanted to drive out again, the power steering stopped working. The steering worked, but was very, very heavy, even heavier than a Citi Golf. I got my father in law to put it on the diagnostics, and it reported "power steering control module" failures. Folks on the UK Mondeo forums suggested ABS sensors (the usual issue), but we checked those. Leaving the car for hours, or disconnecting batter for a while would let the steering work fine for a few minutes, then it would fail again.

I took the car in to Action Ford on 2 Jan. First issue picked up was that the battery was dying. It was 6 months old, so it was replaced under warranty. Then Ford just never called me back. I went in the following week, and they just shrugged and gave me the car back, and suggested I take it to Driveshaft Centre. At least Ford did do a brake hose replacement, part of a recall.

I went to National Power Steering. They confirmed the diagnosis, but they're unable to rebuild uncommon electronic steering racks. I called Ford for a quote on a new rack. R48000, excluding labour! Worse, delivery only in 2-3 months. It seems that because of a recall on the racks (a different issue - corrosion on bolts), there's no stock anywhere; guys in the UK have been waiting since October.

So we went onto Gumtree, and found a guy selling a Fusion rack from a scrapyard, and FIL and I went out there on the Saturday. The place took the rack out from under a wrecked (side-impact) Fusion, a 2016 petrol model, and on the Monday my FIL and his assistant fitted the rack to my car. It's not a hectic job; drop front subframe, unbolt rack, anti-roll bar, steering column, etc., and reverse the process with the replacement. One steering arm was replaced with my car's because the donor one was bent from the crash.

Here's the junkyard kitten at Belmont Auto Spares in Marshalltown.
IMG_20240113_121713.jpg

The gunmetal coloured donor car is right in front of the red car.
IMG_20240113_105311.jpg

FIL cracked open the electronic part of the damaged rack, and sure enough there was corrosion and actual water inside. It's supposed to be sealed, and quite high up, so I have no idea how it happened. The circuit board is part of the rack, and not individually replaceable. The replacement rack works fine, thankfully, no programming or anything needed, just two cables to be connected (to power and to CANBUS). I did have to get wheel alignment.

Old and new racks.
IMG_20240115_093726.jpg
The old rack circuit board. You can see the corrosion on screws and chips.
IMG_20240115_104215.jpg

Now the car is all working again, and I'm avoiding puddles, LOL.
IMG_20240119_185951.jpg
 
epah said:
I enjoyed the read but why didnt you just go through insurance?
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Insurance doesn't cover mechanical issues, and for damage like this to be claimed from insurance, there needs to be actual external damage (like you can't claim for tyres or wheel alignment if you hit a pothole, unless you have a bent rim). Not that it would have helped anyway, with no stock of new parts.
 
Claymore said:
Insurance doesn't cover mechanical issues, and for damage like this to be claimed from insurance, there needs to be actual external damage (like you can't claim for tyres or wheel alignment if you hit a pothole, unless you have a bent rim). Not that it would have helped anyway, with no stock of new parts.
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No i get that, but this damage was caused by ''flooding'' right? surely that would qualify for insurance.
 
epah said:
No i get that, but this damage was caused by ''flooding'' right? surely that would qualify for insurance.
Click to expand...
Maybe, if it had been obvious it was the direct cause. The issue cropped up a day later, and there were no other issues at all. More likely that insurance would have said it was a warranty issue with the car. Just based on my interactions with insurance anyway. By the time we found water in the rack, it was almost a month later.
 
Nothing beats a good, old fashioned hydraulic power steering.

The problem with Ford is that they always seem to find a way to make their electronics more prone to failure.

But good job and I'm happy for you that it did not need programming, what have you done to make this one waterproof?
 
I had a Corsa Gamma a few years ago and its electric power steering motor is on the steering column. No idea how it works because you cannot hear the motor at all. But at least that isn't prone to the elements.
 
Wait so there was water in the power steering rack.
 
TheChamp said:
Nothing beats a good, old fashioned hydraulic power steering.

The problem with Ford is that they always seem to find a way to make their electronics more prone to failure.

But good job and I'm happy for you that it did not need programming, what have you done to make this one waterproof?
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In theory, they are waterproof already, in a sealed unit (and these cars are British, so you'd expect them to be pretty waterproof).
 
Further issues, not power steering related:

We went on holiday last month, to the Eastern Cape. About 5km outside Bloemfontein, I started getting orange lights on the car's dash, and the car went into a limp mode, with the gearbox hunting between gears and somewhat limited power. We immediately navigated into Bloem, heading for the Ford dealership. We made it there successfully, and the service manager connected up a laptop and looked at the diagnostics.

He told us the problem was a faulty EGR (exhaust gas recirculation) valve. He said the computer puts the car in limp mode to protect the engine and gearbox, which I think is ridiculous, since the EGR is purely for emissions control. He quoted us R32000 for the EGR, and of course there was no stock. WTF! I told him we couldn't afford that, and asked for alternatives.

He directed us to a company called Dyno Tech about 4km away. We drove there - and the car behaved perfectly the whole way, no issues. Once there, the staff were very accommodating, and the owner himself, Dewald, got to work on the car. It took about 3½ hours, and they fitted a blanking plate to the EGR (which prevents the exhaust gas from recirculating back to the inlet manifold), and downloaded the correct software that bypasses the EGR and DPF (diesel particulate filter) in the electronic control unit. They charged me R5.5K, of which R3500 was for the software. So basically the EGR no longer works. Good. My wife of course had lots of comments about Ford, and had already picked out a Kia Sportage 2.0 TDCI for me that I could replace my Fusion with.

We continued on our journey, but decided to stop in Aliwal North for the night. I was interested to see that the hotel had an electric vehicle charging station, with two different charger connections. I haven't actually seen a proper charging station before.

Then, the trip home: We stayed in Hogsback, and the road there was a nice tar road. Leaving Hogsback though, Waze's route was to head north out of the town. Well, that was a dirt road; I figured it couldn't be too bad. It was utterly terrible. We slowly crept and scraped our way along, figuring it had to get better soon. We covered the 30km of that road in 90 minutes, and then turned on to a much better dirt road, and finally a tarred road. Then I pulled over to take some pics of a dam, and the car was making a terrible knocking noise. We didn't have too much choice, so we carried on driving, and the noise seemed to only be at very low speeds or when stopped. It eventually seemed to get better, and there wasn't any noise at highway speeds.

I later checked Waze, and the best alternative route was south out of Hogsback. All tar, but 100km longer. It would have been worth it. In fact, that's now Waze's recommended route, probably because it's now taking our slow drive into account.

My FIL checked the car. The protective cover under the car was damaged, and hitting rocks had moved the rear engine/gearbox mount bushing, resulting in metal on metal knocking. He fixed that.

I need fewer car hassles...
 
Claymore said:
Further issues, not power steering related:

We went on holiday last month, to the Eastern Cape. About 5km outside Bloemfontein, I started getting orange lights on the car's dash, and the car went into a limp mode, with the gearbox hunting between gears and somewhat limited power. We immediately navigated into Bloem, heading for the Ford dealership. We made it there successfully, and the service manager connected up a laptop and looked at the diagnostics.

He told us the problem was a faulty EGR (exhaust gas recirculation) valve. He said the computer puts the car in limp mode to protect the engine and gearbox, which I think is ridiculous, since the EGR is purely for emissions control. He quoted us R32000 for the EGR, and of course there was no stock. WTF! I told him we couldn't afford that, and asked for alternatives.

He directed us to a company called Dyno Tech about 4km away. We drove there - and the car behaved perfectly the whole way, no issues. Once there, the staff were very accommodating, and the owner himself, Dewald, got to work on the car. It took about 3½ hours, and they fitted a blanking plate to the EGR (which prevents the exhaust gas from recirculating back to the inlet manifold), and downloaded the correct software that bypasses the EGR and DPF (diesel particulate filter) in the electronic control unit. They charged me R5.5K, of which R3500 was for the software. So basically the EGR no longer works. Good. My wife of course had lots of comments about Ford, and had already picked out a Kia Sportage 2.0 TDCI for me that I could replace my Fusion with.

We continued on our journey, but decided to stop in Aliwal North for the night. I was interested to see that the hotel had an electric vehicle charging station, with two different charger connections. I haven't actually seen a proper charging station before.

Then, the trip home: We stayed in Hogsback, and the road there was a nice tar road. Leaving Hogsback though, Waze's route was to head north out of the town. Well, that was a dirt road; I figured it couldn't be too bad. It was utterly terrible. We slowly crept and scraped our way along, figuring it had to get better soon. We covered the 30km of that road in 90 minutes, and then turned on to a much better dirt road, and finally a tarred road. Then I pulled over to take some pics of a dam, and the car was making a terrible knocking noise. We didn't have too much choice, so we carried on driving, and the noise seemed to only be at very low speeds or when stopped. It eventually seemed to get better, and there wasn't any noise at highway speeds.

I later checked Waze, and the best alternative route was south out of Hogsback. All tar, but 100km longer. It would have been worth it. In fact, that's now Waze's recommended route, probably because it's now taking our slow drive into account.

My FIL checked the car. The protective cover under the car was damaged, and hitting rocks had moved the rear engine/gearbox mount bushing, resulting in metal on metal knocking. He fixed that.

I need fewer car hassles...
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It's a very low riding car, taking it on a gravel road was a brave thing to do.

But listen to your wife, her choice of car sounds proper. You are probably going to take a loss on your fusion so maybe keep it for yourself if you like it and get a proper family car.
 
TheChamp said:
It's a very low riding car, taking it on a gravel road was a brave thing to do.

But listen to your wife, her choice of car sounds proper. You are probably going to take a loss on your fusion so maybe keep it for yourself if you like it and get a proper family car.
Click to expand...

I didn't realise the gravel road was so bad, and once committed... After the 30km, there was another 15km of very nice sand road, just perfect, no hassles at all.

I do love the Fusion, and up till November, it hadn't given a minute of trouble in almost 4 years. According to the overseas forums, there are three main issues: steering rack (replaced), water pump (replaced, and cambelt done early too), and EGR (bypassed). It's a good family car, though I don't quite need a family car much anymore, LOL. We actually had quite a lot of free space in the boot on holiday.
 
sAnD-mAn said:
Get the DPF removed..not just bypassed
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I have heard that that can result in the cat getting blocked; that true? I must figure out where it is, probably somewhere on the exhaust. I thought the EGR would be a little thing, but apparently it's a huge device down under the engine.
 
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