Power steering 'silent' failure

[DeejUK]

_sigh_

The steering on my '17 MX90D just became suddenly quite stiff. The missus was driving at the time, and she says it's like driving a car without power steering. I've given it a drive myself, and the steering is weirdly intermittent - as you're turning the steering wheel, it seems to go through zones of steering somewhat normally and then getting quite stiff and resistant.

Any thoughts or insights on how best to diagnose the problem would be most welcome.

I've booked a trip away for the family next weekend, which I'm probably going to have to cancel now. I've raised a service request.

Protip - get extended warranties, 'cause these cars are pretty fault-prone.

 

[DeejUK]

Hmm. After watching the video in this post, I went out and tried turning the steering wheel before pressing the break. The wheels turned, but crikey, it required a lot of force.

I pressed the brake and drove it around the car park (parking lot for our transatlantic friends) and steering was way easier than before the brake was pressed. It seemed a bit less stiff than when I originally posted, but again was intermittent in both how many degrees of turn resulted in a stiff spot, and whether stiff spots appeared at all.

I'm wondering if there's just some crap in the U-joint, as mentioned in that video?

 

[DeejUK]

Any idea how hard it would be for a novice to jack up a Model X, remove a wheel, squirt some lube at the U-joint, and put everything back together?

 

[mxnym]

If you are allowed to access the field service manual over there, you could look at it and see what you think, just need to figure out where to look first. The Service Subscriptions section of the Tesla Service site says "Complimentary" under "Pricing" for the "Service and Repair Information" subscription in the US, but I don't know if they did that due to some law or if it's done internationally.

 

[brkaus]

Any idea how hard it would be for a novice to jack up a Model X, remove a wheel, squirt some lube at the U-joint, and put everything back together?

It’s straight forward to remove the wheel. Make sure you Jack it up properly. Also be sure you have a jack stand under it before you put any part of your body under the car. That’s the trickier part.

 

[DeejUK]

Thanks for the help, folks. With the assistance of my dad, an electric jack that barely worked, a brick, a couple of bits of wood, a jack stand, and enough WD40 to fill a bathtub, it now seems to be fixed!

 

[DeejUK]

Cross-posting that it happened again, and this time I managed to get the WD40 in without needing to jack it. Might be useful for anyone that experiences it in the future.