Well this was scary...on the drive to work today going downhill at ~63mph I lose all power steering and the PS light comes on. This happened once before from a cold start, but at the time I turned it off and back on and I had PS again.

This time was different, since I was actually on the highway. This is not safe at all, it was very hard to turn (I should know, I have a 16 year old Audi with a broken PS pump).

Yes, I have read through the threads. Take it to the dealer? They are a bunch of monkeys...they didn't fix my rough idle and they gave me blank stares when I pointed out that the '06 RX-8's have painted wheel hubs while the '04's don't. *sigh*.

 

I had the same thing happen with my car; taking a right-hand turn onto a freeway onramp, the EPS died and the MIL lit. I drove the rest of the way to work with no power steering.... but when I got off work and started the car several hours later, everything was working fine again and the light was off.

I did a search and found this thread:
https://www.rx8club.com/series-i-trouble-shooting-95/eps-failure-62193/
I also have a REVi intake and it's possible that during the install a connector might have gotten loosened. The EPS connector is next to the radiator fan just under the battery side of the REVi. It only has a few wires in it and is pinned to the shroud. I never dissected anything to check it because I ended up selling the car a couple weeks later, and it never happened again.

 

inconvenient; yes

unsafe; no


poopy happens dude, this isn't a world of perfection ...

 

Had my steering unit go. Bring it in to have it replaced. In the meantime when you notice the light comes on, just click the key back to shut the car down for a quick sec. (enough time just for the gauges to shut off and then put it back into the run position before the rpms drop and the car will stay running and the power steering module will reset.

Used to do this a few times until I could get it in for warranty work.