Power Steering, the definite way to rule out harness issues.
 

I have been struggling with power steering issues for about 3 years now, it will come, it will go.

The damn piece of shit has a mind of its own, and i believe that it is just there to piss me off.

Finally tuned my car properly, enjoyed it for 3 days, then boom EPS goes......
Take it to my mechanic who was booked out for a week, the minute i get there, the damn eps starts working again.

A month later, had to replace the supercharger, on the way home after the repairs the damn thing goes again, only to self repair itself when i got it there.
Guess what it fucks up again, on the way back to work.

Had enough, lined up a second hand steering rack and module and was about to pull the trigger until i decided to do one last thing.

In terms of repair history, i have in the past purchased a complete new harness, all connectors cleaned blah blah. Coolant overflow hose routed to bottom of car

Now in my specific situation the error code has always been torque sensor error.

So I tested all the resistance again, and found that the left pin and the middle pin had high resistance, i tested the pins on the replaceable harness and the issue was not there. Which means the main harness.... PITA.

Anyways cut the bull crap short, i cut the 3 pin connector on the EPS module, and the other end that connects to the torque sensor, i got 3 seperate and independent wires and soldered these straight on to the connectors on both end and plugged them in.

Problem fixed, no eps issues, and my steering has stiffened up again with good feedback, unlike before where it was just loosey goosey.

So if anyone else is up to their neck of frustrating with the EPS try this fix, if this does not work for you, chances are then there is a issue with either the module or the steering shaft.

Yeah, one of the first things I did with my 8 was to cut out that connector and solder an extension between them and seal it up properly. I never had a power steering problem over 113,000 miles. I don't make a blanket recommendation for it because to do it properly, it's beyond the skills of most. But if you have the skills, or have someone available that does, it's easily one of the better options. Removes the problem point completely.

Definitely, Electrical problems are always a nightmare, then when you put wiring problems in a huge ass loom that is completely covered it just becomes an absolute nightmare to sus out individual wires and potential problems.

My new motto for electrical problems, "When in doubt, cut the bloody bastard"

ok gents. Is it possible to turn this thread into a DIY and have either of you two fine gentleman explain in detail this fix. I am mechanically competant even with wireing and i would very much like to do this fix because i have an issues with power steering until i re routed the coolant line. So. Anyone wanna take a crack at it ?

I think the harness that he mentions is the circular female plug one on the top in the picture below and it is located located just under the Air Intake Box tray and the A/C pulley.

http://photos-h.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos...87020806_n.jpg

https://photos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphoto...64487836_n.jpg

Also, try wiggling your negative terminal on your battery which has the 60 amp EPS fuse. If it is loose, clean and retighten the clamp for that terminal.

https://www.rx8club.com/attachments/...0-14-29-38-jpg

If you are competent with wiring, it really is as simple as it sounds. Just remove the air box and air box tray to get to the connector, remove the clip from it's mounting point on the fans. Snip the connector out, add in your own wires, twisting, soldering, and shrink wrapping them to ensure they have a permanent grasp on each other and are protected. It's recommended to do one wire at a time, don't just cut them all off. Snip off one wire from each connector, make that connection permanent, then move to the next, etc... Make sure you use same-gauge or thicker wire, don't use thinner wire than what is already there.

/\ This what i did last dec. and so far no PS issue.

I removed mine, cleaned them, greased them up, installed the harness, and secured it tightly with the zipties(like in my picture above). Worked for me since I did it four years ago when I replaced my radiator and two years ago when I had a re-man' engine installed. I guess it's a hit-and-miss. We end up having the same problem but end up with different solutions; some are as simple as a dirty connection, others have spent almost a down-payment for a car and its still broken.

I did mine slightly different then RIWWP, since my custom car setup, accessing that connector was quite tedious, i did the cut right at the EPS module, where the 3 pin connector goes into the the EPS module.
I then drilled a hole at the back of the ECU box to run the wires through, and down to the torque sensor's connector, at which point that was snipped and reconnected to the new wiring.

I know this is not the most elegant way to do things, but i was pretty darn over this eps system.

Everybody's PS issue is different, some have wiring issues while someone's rack is actually broken.

There is really no point cutting the connector, the problem is the connector and pin, and it's really not hard to de-pin , get a new connector and pin, and reinstall.

another reason why I don't cut it and solder/run new wires is because the wiring is so brittle, when you try to cut it there is a chance that you break something else in the main harness, I seen one of the car that has "another" weird wire jumping around that area, and of course the car never ran right and at the end I had to strip everything for him and run a new used harness.

I would say that it's easier to re-wire around the connector, but it's a trivial difference. Replacing the connector pins leaves future failure a possibility, where deleting the connector largely negates that if done properly. The brittle harness point is moot in my opinion, since it is still a potential problem for re-pinning the connector. You move the harness around just as much in either procedure.

Im sorta used to de-pin, with the right tool it's not hard at all. sometimes just use a new pin will solve the problem. but still 70% chance it's the EPS harness that's causing issue.

when i get around to it i will just separate the torque sensor harness from the rest of the EPS harness, hardwire it to the chassis harness and run new wires to the sensor plug and solder them to the original sensor connector pins for a solid connection. there's no real need for it to be a part of the EPS harness anyways.

my power steering only works about half of the time, it's about as annoying as anything i can imagine. doesn't matter if it's hot or cold, night or day.

in regards to stating everyone's issue is different.

That is true, however i personally felt the most common issue is the wiring. As stated in my OP, my issue was not with the connectors that normally fails but rather in between that harness and the torque sensor connector. Main Wiring Loom is such a pita, rather then pulling it all apart and tracing the specific wire, i cut and soldered that wiring straight from Point A to Point B. Check resistance.

In my case that completely fixed the resistance issue, meaning that the pins on the connector from the EPS module, The Torque Sensor Connector had no issues.
This worked in MY case.

In my honest recommendation, if you have the time and the $$.

Go and check resistance of the 3 pin connector from the EPS module all the way to the connector to the torque sensor. Check each one, in my case it was the left pin and center pin that had issues.

If there is a resistance issue, you should try this in the following order

A: Clean Connectors
B: Try a new top harness
C: repin all the connectors
D: Straight connect by re soldering those wires.

Now if this did not work, then i know its either
A. Rack is gone
B. Module is gone

Then can replace accordingly without going back into the loom again.

Once again the code that was thrown for my EPS issue was Torque Sensor Error.

I guess you can say it is a bit of an ultimatum, but after 3 years of EPS issue i guess i just had enough.

Very nice 8. Like the wheels. Looks sleek. good job.

you're right in that it seems no matter how well you clean that connection it just seems like a problem that most people brush under the rug and never actually test the resistance of the torque sensor wiring.

i could tell on mine that coolant had gotten onto the connector at some point and even cleaning the connection still had only a marginal impact on the results.

i cut out the harness connector for the torque sensor from under the coolant expansion tank, hardwired it to new wiring and soldered those to the original pins in the torque sensor connector.

so far so good, the steering hasn't been inoperative yet regardless that the wiring looked perfectly fine. basically i just separated those tiny 3 green wires and ripped them out and replaced them with slightly lower gauge wiring, crimped and shrink wrapped the wiring where the original connector was at the radiator, depinned the torque sensor connector and spliced/soldered there. i also rewrapped the EPS harness and cleaned the ground strap ring terminals.

red>green/blue>left TS pin
green/red>green/red>center TS pin
green/yellow>green/yellow>right TS pin

rerouting the coolant drain is probably the easiest step to avoid this altogether. once it happens to purge just once, the damage is done.

all in all it took about an hour.

plus eliminating that connector cuts out one of the most common failure points IMO, and it cost about $1 in materials if you have them on hand. maybe $20 if you need to buy them all including a few cheap tools. replacing the harness still does not guarantee that corrosion remaining on the upstream torque sensor connector won't still repeat the issue.

it's been about a week since i did it and out of about 30 times the car would have lost power steering in that time it has dropped it 0 times.

Can anyone let me know exactly what to cut out please and thanks

i think if you are having difficulty understanding the thread you might not want to try this :)

The gist is that the EPS sensor wiring has a connector in the middle of it that tends to have problems with the connection,,,it gets corroded when the coolant expansion tank spits coolant on it from the overflow.

The discussion is how to repair the wiring by rewiring either the connector or the whole run of wires between the EPS torque sensor qnd the control unit

Thanks dannobre,
Oh no trust me I understand all this I beem going thru no ps for over a year now and beem reading thru a bunch of thread all saying cut and solider here and there. But what I didn't understand was which side , the side at the bottom at the torque sensor or more upstream near the radiator, or even by the eps. But thanks your answer is what I was looking for.

Hi Kevvv

Dont worry, i understand your frustration in this.

I have been through the same, both trying to fix DIY and through professional help.

No Avail.

So this is what i thought up of, basically redoing the whole harness for EPS.

If you look at your steering rack, i believe for US car it should be at the front left, there is a little sensor/connector where your steering column meets the steering rack. That is your torque sensor, On there should be a connector that goes to your main wiring harness.

If you unplug that harness you should see 3 wires connected to the back. Memorize the order of these wires, write it down, look based on the colors. Now i believe the service manual has the specific colors and arrangement written in. Dunno which page but.

Anyhow next step is to go into your ECU container, once you have the LID off take the ECU out and under there is your Power Steering Module, look for a 3 PIN connector, if memory serves me correct it should be the rightmost one (this is for a australian RX8 so i can not promise you it is in the exact same position).

Once again memorize the 3 wires.

Now comes the scary part of deciding what you are going to do, 2 ways to do it,

1 way is to take the pins out of the connector and re pin,

what i did was just cut them, leaving abit of wiring behind the connectors and soldering them then wrapping them.

After you cut both sides of the wires, tape up the remaining wires and secure it.

Run 3 new sets of wires from Point A to Point B and then solder them to order.

Hope this helps

Best Regards
Jason

Thanks for the reply tofu_box, you guys all been helpful to me .
Okay I solder the wires for the torque sensor and clean the other connectors with dielectric cleaner, I went to go plug everything back together, grounded the two wires wires . After I went to start the car and guess what?? NOTHING no crank no start. And worst yet the key immobolizer lights on. What could have cause this??
Everything was going good , and yeah I triple check all the fuse and replys. Any ideas anyone? I cant find out if the ps works until I get the car to even crank at least.

Note: I do have an aftermarket viper alarm with remote start.

unplug the harness and see if the car starts.

bringing this old thread back to life.... since I got my car in April the EPS has never worked consistently. i tried cleaning the connections, replacing the EPS harness, replacing the EPS control module (twice), replacing the EPS relay under the control module..... sometimes it would work. sometimes it wouldn't. it could go 3 weeks working consistently, then next 3 weeks not work 90% of the time. in last month or 2 it has only worked 2-3 times for one trip (then next start it wouldn't work). fault was always torque sensor (except once internal module fault, which I fixed by replacing module with ebay one). I measured the torque sensor resistance and it was good. this past weekend per this post I measured the resistance of torque sensor wires in main harness thatn run from the EPS module to the connector under the air box housing. even though resistance was normal, I decided to add new jumper wires using vampire clamps from the EPS module to the connector under air box housing, similar to what the OP did except I didn't solder and only ran it to the connector not the sensor. basically I bypassed the main harness wires from the module to the connector. my EPS immediately starting working and has worked since. i am going to make this permanent by soldering the new wires from module to connector. thanks to the OP.

Gee, thats 2 for 2 who have had this issue and solved it with this fix... I have my engine out for a rebuild, might consider doing this as preventative maintenance while access is easy.