Steering Wheel Issue

carx12

Car went in for MOT and failed. The garage replaced the following parts in the car
- New door lock (Not as part of MOT failure)
- Anti-roll bar link offsite front
- Track rod end Nearside front

Post that when I went to pick up the car, was told the steering wheel feels a little tight.
When I switched on the car, there were two beeps , the steering fault light came on the dash, and the steering was very heavy/tight, and couldnt be rotated freely like always.
Wonder how they could have missed such a thing before asking me to collect the car.

Garage are looking into it, but maintain nothing they did might have caused the new issue. They have said the MOT was fine, and hence this is a bizzare issue that has happened. Not figured out yet what is causing the issue.

Garage still hold the car as they are troubleshooting, but I can only think that the work done on the car has caused some issues.

** The steering issues werent there when I drove the car there. They mentioned, the steering issues would have started after the fixing work was done and car re-MOT'ed with a pass.**

Get a feeling that either the re-MOT wasnt done properly (or) car mishandled/some other work was carried on that resulted in the new issues. I can only assume the work has resulted in issues. Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

Your thoughts ? Thanks

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What car is it? (and year)
Mini?

carx12

Hi. Its a 2005 VW Golf

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Golfs of that era are fitted with an electric power steering rack.
These are well known to simply fail without warning. There is a fuse to check, but your garage should read the fault codes and find out what is wrong.

There are plenty on eBay, starting at £75, reconditioning yours is about £350, plus the removal & fitting.

I doubt if the garage did anything to break it, simply unscrewing a trackrod end.

System

As above. It is coincidental it has failed during the MOT. The MOT test does put some parts of cars through movement they'd not normally see on the road, the brake test for example, but should be well within the capability of the vehicle however that has a habit of breaking something which has been borderline for some time.

It could be that in this case the steering being moved lock to lock and being rapidly shaken from left to right for however long it took to check steering components for play was enough to tip yours over the edge.

I would hate to be a garage that MOT'd cars because you get blamed for everything that happens during a test.

Robisere

These are the steering parts of your VW.
Track rods are the 2 long parts with a bolt at right angles and a conical rubber boot. T.R. ends are the right-angle-with-a boot parts. When the Ends are removed to fit new ones, the new ends have to be screwed back on in exactly the same place as the old ones. If that is not done right, it can put the steering wheel out of alignment. Just moving the wheels from lock to lock too forcefully and/or quickly, can affect the power steering. I know: one of my mechanics once did that.
Was the steering wheel still aligned properly, i.e. straight ahead? If they fitted a new track rod end without screwing the end back on in exactly the same place, it would have put the steering wheel out.

carx12

Thanks for the replies

Garage say the power steering has been cut off completely due to a condition they arent able to figure out. As per garage 1) MOT failed 2) they did the fixing work as in my original thread 3)the car passed its re-MOT 4) and issue seems to have occured automatically after this .

I was also asked to collect the car and was informed of the issue when I went to collect it.
How a mechanic could miss a steering light on the dash/two beeps and non-working power steering is difficult to understand. If like they say it occured after re-MOT, dont see why they asked me to collect the car.

Whilst I understand the car is old and if the MOT puts stress on parts, then would we not have a wider issue with many cars having faults post MOT.

The car was given in a drivable condition to the garage.
As a non-technical person in the context of a car, I would guess to have it back in a drivable condition too.

System

carx12 wrote: »

The car was given in a drivable condition to the garage.
As a non-technical person in the context of a car, I would guess to have it back in a drivable condition too.

If you instruct them to repair it you will. You seem to be under the impression that they've deliberately broken it. Quite why I don't know. Cars break sometimes without warning, especially older ones. Sometimes the timing is unfortunate but there isn't a great conspiracy amongst MOT garages to go breaking people's cars.