I am having an issue with my power steering. It seems there is no assist, or very little. One day it was fine, never a problem, the next it was gone. No fault indicated by the EPS control module. I have tried cleaning the connectors by the radiator support, but have not yet checked the ones on the rack itself. The car has been garaged its entire life and never driven in the winter (VT) and rarely even in the rain as I live on a dirt road. The car has only 23K miles on it. Given the conditions it's been used in I doubted the connectors would be the problem. They looked fine, but I sprayed them just the same. Before I go mucking around with the connectors on the rack (hard to get to), I thought I'd see if anyone else had a suggestion, or experience with this problem.

 

Have you checked fuses? One thing with storage is critters can gnaw on wiring, maybe check for that.

 

Another simple one is the ground connections. The system does some funky things when not grounded well.

 

Yes, the fuse is fine, I checked it with a meter. There is not even a hint of corrosion anywhere on the car, so grounding should not be a concern. I don't how know or where to look for a grounding issue that might affect the steering system anyway, since unlike the old days, grounds are generally carried in the harness rather than grounding tabs all over the body of the vehicle. The power to the rack is two conductors (power and ground) and the signal cable also carries its own ground. I have measured this to the EPS control module, which is a painful process, wiggling wires and connectors to look for intermittent connections and everything is fine. What I don't understand is why the system is not detecting the failure. I do have a MIL light now so once I get that scanned I may have more of a clue, but I don't know if EPS issues would be flagged in the PCM so it may be totally unrelated. If it doesn't shed some light on this, I'll attack the connections at the rack next.

 

While rare, EPS control modules have failed. I'd be surprised it would at that mileage, but could be age-related, like a leaking cap.
There are grounding tabs in several spots around the engine bay, wouldn't hurt to verify them. See what that MIL has to say, at that mileage MILs are also unexpected.