365: Don't Get Steered The Wrong Way

0:00Welcome to the Automotive Diagnostic Podcast. We're going to explore ways to sharpen our diagnostic skills, find learning resources, and hear from experts in the automotive field. Hey, have you ever been faced with a challenge of sourcing, installing, and programming a used control module in a vehicle? I know a lot of us have. It seems to be happening more and more often today with the volume of control modules on vehicles, the cost of some new ones, or even the availability of new control modules in some cases used may be the only option. So what do you do here? I strongly recommend checking out SJ Auto Solutions in Tommy O'Leave. Tommy offers a cloning service for used control modules to make these things plug and play

1:04for the vehicle that you're working on. In a lot of cases, he is also able to source the control modules if you're unable to locate one for the vehicle that you're working on. But once you get connected with Tommy, he's going to offer fantastic support from start to finish to make sure that that control module is going to work in your application. He's also got tech support that he offers through his website, along with some free resources there as well on information about used control module programming. So make sure to check out SJ Auto Solutions. I can't recommend that enough. Hey, what's going on? Automotive World, welcome to another episode of the Automotive Diagnostic Podcast. My name is Sean Tipping. I'll be your host once again for this week's episode. Thank you so much for joining me. This week on the show, I'm going to talk about a rash of cars we've had recently with electric power steering issues.

2:06So obviously doing the programming and a diagnostic thing, we get vehicles that have either had an electric steering control module or rack or combination, usually is what it is, replaced and we need to program and calibrate that whatever form that takes or a vehicle has an issue with the electric steering in one form or another or diagnosing it. And you know, happens periodically, it's part of the car, it's part of the service we offer. I'm sure many of you have dealt with them as well too, but I've got three cars here that we've dealt with recently that I'm going to talk about on the show, just because I think that they are interesting and it all sort of fit under this category, which just had a rash of lately. So the three cars are going to be a 2017 Chevrolet Volt, a 2019 Chevrolet Silverado, so two GMs, and then a 2019 Audi Q7. And that one's pretty interesting and might save you from replacing a rack.

3:09So I'll save that one for last, but the first one was actually just more surprising to me than anything. I drove this vehicle, this was a diagnostic, I turned it into a programming, but it was a diagnostic for what we got called out for and the shop was requesting that we do some calibration or programming. And I drove this thing, this was the 2017 Chevrolet Volt. I drove this and he said there's a pole to the left. Now I was like, yeah, there definitely is a pole to the left. When I drove this, it was very noticeable even at slow speeds. Like you barely had to leave the parking lot and you could tell that this vehicle was like pulling to the left and it felt like an actual suspension pole. Like the wheel was cambered out too much. And this is coming from my experience at fixing a lot of vehicles, diagnosing a lot of front end and suspension issues when I worked at Firestone and some other independent repair shops where I was actually doing the front end work.

4:13I was doing alignments, replacing steering components and all that and diagnosing poles on vehicles. People would bring them in and this felt like it was either a suspension or a tire pole. Now they did mention that they had hit something with this vehicle. I think it bent to control arm or something like that, but they replaced all that. They had brand new control arms. They did an alignment to had brand new tires on the front of it. And so most of the stuff that I would have been looking at to cause a pole had already been done. Now I didn't personally do the alignment. So I have to question that in a way, but I'm driving this thing and it feels like that is the type of pole that I'm dealing with. And I'm like, yeah, this is not going to be fixed with a calibration, but that's what I was there for is to check for that. So I actually went through the data within the power steering control module, which is the rack on this thing. And looking at it when I had the wheel in the centered position, right? So the steering wheel is actually in the exact centered position.

5:16It showed that the position was seven degrees off. And so I was wondering, well, okay, well, maybe this can actually cause it. Can I fix this? Can I actually do the calibration? I mean, what's it going to hurt if I try and the pole is still there than they have to look elsewhere? Or to fix this, you know, something, get it on the rack and what was missed, maybe the alignment wasn't done right. But let's see if I can, you know, do a calibration and actually did the steering centering procedure on this one, which is a special function within the power steering control module. I've done this feature on GMs and it even gives you a warning when you run this function of steering centering that you usually don't need to do this process. And all of the other times that I have done this up, it hasn't fixed the issue that I was attempting to fix. There's something else wrong. But I ran it and it has you centered the steering wheel. And then I went back in the data stream and it read zero when the wheel was straight and I went out and drove it and the pole was gone.

6:17And again, I mean, if you're working on these types of vehicles all the time, you might be like, well, Sean, that's very obvious and we see that all the time. Of course, you're supposed to correct that after it hits something. And I'd be like, yeah, you know, at this point, that makes sense. But honestly, the way this is seeing felt when I drove, it did not feel like the electric steering was pulling the wheel. It felt like there was a tire pull or something. But again, that's just going based off of feel. And like I was talking about with my AC diagnostics a few weeks ago, I feel there are certain areas of the vehicle where I've become a little rusty or my experience is based in older vehicles. And I mean, all of us have seen that when you go to like a training event and you can tell that the person that's putting out the training hasn't actually worked on the cars in 10 plus years. Like if you're in it, you know exactly what's going on with cars today. And then you're listening to somebody you talk. Talks about fixing them 10 years prior.

7:19You're like, okay, they're not quite in touch with, you know, how things have evolved and changed. And boy, I feel like that's one of them that Chevrolet vault. You can tell me if I'm wrong, but I have a feeling, you know, this is sort of the repair after, you know, you have some sort of collision or bent parts or replacement of parts in the front end is to this steering, centering procedure. Now, was there something else that was bent? I don't know, but the wheel was straight and the pole was gone after we did that. So easy fix on that one. So that's our quick and simple one. The next one is another GM product or a product. And this was a Silverado. We were called out to program a power steering rack. And I think I actually talked about this one briefly on another episode recently. This was a SenseU car where the shop, their real experience in the SenseU thing where basically they'll blame anything. They call us out for programming a lot. And if it doesn't fix their problem, it's our fault. We did something wrong. Okay, so we document everything and we're real thorough about that.

8:22So we were covered. It was that exact situation with this one. We got called out to program a power steering control module, which is part of the rack on this 19 Silverado. We did it. And then afterwards, we noticed like at the shop, like, hey, the power steering is not working correctly. And so they wanted us to come back out because immediately there were accusations of we didn't program it right and we screwed this up and whatever. I'm actually, I'm already the past the point of working with these guys. I'm not interested in it, but we were out there for this one. So I'll follow up with it and I told them, hey, we'll come out there. This is our thing. If somebody calls us for something said, hey, you didn't do this right. You need to correct this. I will tell them, yes, we'll come out or my guys are trained to say this. We'll come out. We'll take a look at it. If it's something we screwed up, we'll take care of it. Whatever that costs, you know, if we damage something, we didn't do something right, we'll take care of it. We'll make it up to you for the last time or lost parts or whatever it might be 100%.

9:26It will be very transparent about this. But if it's not something that we cause, we're going to charge you for the time that we spent on it, whether that be a diagnostic or programming or whatever it is. Are you cool with that? We do that and we come out there. We take a look. And, of course, this wasn't because of the programming. The programming was fine. This was an issue where when you would turn the wheel on this Chevrolet Silverado, it would just drop out at certain points and eventually you'd lose communication with a module, right? So you grab the steering wheel, vehicles running, you turn it to the right and then all of a sudden you lose communication with power steering control module. Now, if you're watching in the data pits for the power steering control module while this is happening, number one, you can see the voltage of the module is less than battery voltage just sitting there running, right? So my actual system voltage is up over like 13 and a half volts where the voltage red

10:28in the module is still, it was like 12 and a half. So it was already below. You know, okay, so a volt should it be exactly the same. Yes. Am I going to base everything off of that number? No. But when you go to turn the wheel, which this is electric steering, it's going to pull a lot of amperage to run that motor, especially in a truck, you could see the voltage drop and drop significantly to the point where the module stopped communicating. Okay. So what's happening there is you're demanding more of a load and that's causing the problem. There is a problem. You amplify because the demand for current has gone up, which whatever this is, and you can probably guess what this is where we're going here, it exacerbated the problem by demanding more current through excessive resistance on one side of the power or ground supply to this motor, causing it to drop out and then it would come back. Now, is this why the power steering rack was replaced in the first place? I'm going to guess that it is, but it's our job just to prove the diagnostic and show

11:33them here's exactly what's wrong. So if you see one of these Silverados, I have seen this more than once and maybe you've run into it as well. But if you haven't something to check for, if you live down in the south, you may not have seen this issue. This may not be as prevalent as it is up here in the rust belt. But there is a ground strap that goes from the frame of the vehicle to the body of the vehicle. And this is going to be on the right passenger side of the vehicle. If you're to look at the A pillar, which is right in front of where the passenger would sit, kind of go down from there, it's in front of the tire and then just under where the passenger feet would be. There's a body mount, there's a frame, and there's the body or the cap of the vehicle. There's a braided ground strap that bolts to the frame and then goes up to the body of the vehicle. What this is, this is actually the ground. It is the ground for the frame of the vehicle.

12:34Okay, so everything that is then going to ground off of the frame is going to use that as the ground connection to the body, which then is connected to the actual negative terminal of the battery from the body. So there's a few different connections. You don't have a straight shot from the battery to the frame of the vehicle. You have this intermediate section here and this braided ground strap was all green and like you could touch it and it would fall apart. And in fact, after I had been running the vehicle for a while, it was hot to the touch. Of course, its resistance creates heat. You're demanding a lot of current to go through there when it's running. There's other things rounded off the frame too, like the fuel pump control module, which is also why it had an extended crank. But the power steering control module is going to draw a huge amount of amperage, right? They use like 80 amp fuses on these things because a lot of amperage to move the wheels on the truck. So you could imagine that's a resistance from the corrosion on this braided cable would

13:39create resistance and it's going to build up heat and it's going to drop voltage and things aren't going to work when they don't have the correct ground supply. I mean, this is just basic voltage. So how do I prove this out to them? A couple different ways. Take your meter, put the black end on the black, the negative side of the battery, black lead on the negative side of the battery, take the other lead of your meter or scope and rape away the rust on the frame and touch it to the frame. If you have voltage on the frame, which I did, a couple of volts just with it sitting there running, okay, that's that. There's obviously voltage drop. There should not be a difference in voltage between the negative turn of the battery and the frame of the vehicle. A problem. That was the problem here. So how do we just prove this out to them so I can show them? I just grabbed a jumper cable. I have a pair in my hand and I clipped one end to the negative able of the battery and

14:40I scraped away the rust and I clipped the other end to the frame and what do you know the power steering works? No problem. This episode is brought to you by L1 automotive training and Keith Perkins. If you're looking for education on module programming, J2534, e-prom work, key in a mobilizer, electrical diagnostics or drivability diagnostics, Keith has a website, l1training.com that's got over 60 hours of training videos on all those subjects and more. When I first started out doing mobile, I utilized Keith videos on module programming and J2534 in order to get my head wrapped around what I would need for the tooling, the computers, the software setups, what kind of obstacles I would be up against when I'm out there programming modules on cars and it was a huge benefit to me and I continue to use the training videos

15:44that he has on his website. I strongly recommend checking out l1training.com. The link is in the show notes. No codes, no issues. You can go lock the lock, no big deal. I did have to wiggle that cable connection around quite a bit on the frame because it was rusted but again, that's what you deal with in the rust belt. Not the guy out there and I show them, hey, look, power steering works. Back and forth, lock the lock, no codes, voltage just in drop. I take this jumper cable off, here's what you get, here's your cable, that's what needs to be replaced. Then he admitted that, oh, okay, that was probably the problem all along. Probably was. Anyways, I sound a little amped up about that one but they were very accusatory towards us and they had been in the past too. I don't mention shop names on the show here but frustrating for sure when it's like, we take a lot of effort to do things as right as possible and yeah, stuff happens, we screw

16:44up, we make mistakes. That happens for sure. But it definitely is frustrating when some of our customers, we have a lot of good ones but some of our customers are just, that's the immediate thing that they go to is like, yep, you screwed it up for sure. There's no question. You definitely did it wrong. I guess it feels good to be able to go out there and prove to someone like, hey, you have a different problem. So some of the look for on those Silverados GMC Sierra's is that braided ground strap over on the passenger side frame to body connection for the ground and some easy checks to verify that that's what's going on. Okay. So let's get into the last one here and this one again is probably the most interesting of the three power steering diagnostics I'll talk about today. This is a 2019 Audi Q7 and I had an individual reach out to me on this one. He actually owns a used car lot, which we have several of those customers and he deals primarily in the kind of the higher end European resell stuff, which, but I mean, okay, there's

17:49debate if a Audi Q7 is high end European, but he has a lot of European cars, a lot of Audi's, this being one of them. And it has the power steering, which is inoperable. It's in kind of a limp mode, if you will, or just not functioning at all. Warning lights on the dash and there's a code, which is a C10 CB00. That's in the power steering control module and basically just says that limp mode is not obtainable, which I don't exactly know what that means if there's a limp mode where it gives you some power steering assist. In this case, you didn't have any and this was a hard code and it would reset every single time you cleared it and you did not have power steering and you had warning lights on the dash. Now, he said this happened to him just from disconnecting the rack and plugging it back in. And when he first called me on the phone, I was like, you know, that doesn't really sound

18:50like something that would happen. I feel like maybe you want to go over your checks again and see if there's anything else that you're missing because it's connecting a rack. It's like a normal part of a lot of processes on the vehicle, right? You got to drop the subframe or whatever and unplug the rack. That's just part of it. And then if you do it while the key's off, that shouldn't be an issue. And he's saying, yeah, I agree with you 100%. We've done repairs on vehicles before and that's not something that we've run into. It was the case on this one. And he says, I found a entry in a forum that matches exactly what happened to me. And at first, I'm like, okay, great. Like, the guys out on Google, he's got the fix for me. And, you know, that doesn't always end up really being anything useful. But he's like, this is my exact same situation, exact same car, except for the guys over in Europe, that was the only difference. The guy in the forum found a way to actually fix this for me. And I'm wondering if you can do it because I've called around to several shops.

19:53And I even brought it to a place that had Otis, which is the factory of Vulto Agonotti software. And they weren't able to do this. But this guy on this forum has this fix with the exact same symptom, the exact same code, the exact same fix. Can you come out and attempt this for me? And so that was a little bit more interesting. So I'm like, well, once you send me what you have as far as this forum goes, and it's off of a website, which I'm sure many of you have seen, it's MHH Auto, which is a forum that actually goes pretty deep into the automotive software and intricate programming, maybe some aftermarket programming, maybe some e-prom and board level work. They've got some pretty in-depth stuff and some pretty useful information if you're really in deep to module programming and automotive repair, like lots of us are. And I'm sure many of you have used this, may even be contributors there.

20:56I don't know. But he sends me the screenshot from MHH, and it is exactly what he said. The same car with the same code caused by the same thing, just unplugging the rack and plugging it back in. Now, this guy's fixed for this. Was to use Otis engineering software and to rewrite the firmware for the power steering control module. After that, the code cleared and the steering worked and there was no more issues. And so this guy's question, the guy that called me, was, hey, do you have Otis engineering? And can you do this rewrite of the software? He didn't really understand exactly the intricacies of how that worked, but he's just looking for somebody that can do this because obviously the rack is really expensive. And if somebody can come out and just program it, get it working, and he's assuming that there's nothing actually wrong with the rack, because literally all he did was unplug it and plug it back in. So I said, well, I don't have Otis engineering.

21:57You know, I use regular Otis. I haven't had a need for the engineering software. Some of that stuff too, I would say most of that stuff. If you don't work for Volkswagen, you're not going to have legitimate access to it. And it's going to be some sort of sketchy installation or access to the software if you want to get it. And so what I told him, I was like, well, let me do this. You know, before I go on-tack in some dude in Vietnam to hack my computer and put some weird software on there. Let me come out and check it out and let me see what I can do. And I know you had somebody else look at it with Otis, but I'm pretty experienced with it. And I know the nooks and crannies of the software pretty well. And it's not a user-friendly intuitive software if you've ever used Otis before. But he agrees to, he's like, yeah, just come out and see what you can do. And then we'll kind of make a decision from there. So I get out there and I verify, yes, it is this same code that I mentioned that's in there. The C10CB00.

22:59That's the only code in there. Resets, hard fault, power steering doesn't work. Now, based on the information that I saw in MHH, I thought one of the things I should try is to see if I can update or change the software, the firmware, and the power steering control module. Through regular Otis, what you have an option for on vehicles is to do an update through what's called an SVM code, which I believe is software version management. And it's a tab within the special function of Otis that allows you to go in. And you can do an Audi specifically, you can do an SVM comparison, an actual versus what's on the server, and it will either do one module or all the modules. And make sure that the software in the module is correct for the application. And with used modules, sometimes that can be helpful to correct it.

23:59Sometimes it won't let you do it. But anyways, the other thing that you can do is if Volkswagen or Audi releases an updated software for a particular vehicle, you can go into the SVM options and you can input an action code. Now you get this action code from the service bulletin with the instructions for the update that it's talking about. And it will have a for-digit code, usually I think, sometimes they're different. But it'll have a code on the service bulletin that pertains to your particular vehicle and you enter that SVM code and then it will put that software into that module. So I said, okay, and I look and see if there is there an SVM code because without this SVM code through regular Otis, I didn't have an option to edit or change the software. I actually tried running the replace module function for the parser and control module. And it went through the coding and went through the calibration, but it never changed the software.

25:03And my guess is because it saw the software that was in there was correct for the application, but the SVM code allows you to actually update the software. It's kind of a weird setup. If you're familiar with vehicle programming, a lot of programs will just show you, hey, here's the most up-to-date version. You know, would you like to do it or in the case of GM, they might give you a couple different options. Like, hey, do this one if it's a Middle East application, do this one if it's a United States application or only do this update if you've replaced this part. Same thing with Ford. And Volkswagen doesn't have their setup the same way. Again, you have to find the Bolton, find the SVM code. Maybe if you're at the dealer, the code comes from a different place. I don't have any experience with that. But for these, you get that code, you put it into the action code input for the SVM and then it will push through software. So I went on to all data and I actually found a service Bolton for the power steering

26:09system of this vehicle. Now, it was correcting some other things on there. It wasn't this exact problem that I ran into, but it gave me the SVM action code for this. And I said, well, at this point, even if this service Bolton and the things it's trying to fix don't exactly apply to my situation, what's there to lose at this point? Because if it doesn't work and maybe I could explore the Otis engineering or he's replacing a rack, right? We're not going to necessarily make it any worse, I hope. Do be careful with programming. You can definitely ruin things. But I said at this point, I like there's not much to lose. Let's let's try it. It's got a service Bolton. I've got this action code. I put it in there. It accepts it. Now, if you put the wrong code in or it doesn't apply to the vehicle you're working on, it'll just reject it. In this case, it accept it wrote the software and it brought the rack back to life almost immediately. Code was gone. Everything

27:09worked. Did a bunch of power cycles. Did some lock to locks, scanned it, made sure it was calibrated correctly for steering angle and stuff. It was good. We were good after that. So where I'm going with this is. If you have a 19 Audi, this is a Q7, be careful if you're going to do a service where you have to disconnect a rack because that's literally all this guy did. And the forum report was the same thing that's literally all he did. It wasn't even a battery disconnect. I mean, as far as the module's concerned, maybe it is. But this was just unplugging the rack for a service. This ended up happening to it. Maybe there's a way to prevent it. Maybe somebody out there knows what that is. But you could be in the situation where now you've got to reload the software. Now, I have this one not had an SVM action code. Would I have been able to save it? Maybe not with Otis. Maybe that is where something like Otis engineering comes in. But I don't have that software. And where I'm at right now, I'm not actively pursuing cracked software that's probably stolen at one point or another.

28:15That's not really what I'm interested in having a whole lot of for my business. I'd like to be as legit as possible for most of the stuff. Obviously, you got to find some backdoors and different options on things. I get it. But if I can get it done with factory software, which I have, I'm going to go that way because it's the best option, in my opinion, for the majority of cases. That's where I'm going to wrap this one up at. We've got those three power steering, electric power steering case studies. So hopefully you found that interesting and learned something from that. But that's where I'm going to leave you. Thank you so much for listening. I'll get out there, start fixing the world one car at a time.