mkgrks

Hello everyone!

I have a W176 (A200 2014) and it's been a year since I first saw the following symptom.

I occasionally when starting the car get the following error: "Power steering malfunction See Owner's Manual"



I have found that if I turn the car off, wait for ~10 minutes and start the car again, this message goes away. I have never had it while driving and the 10-minute trick always solves it.

The thing is that I've been in 3 different mechanics/auto electricians so far and none of them have found an issue. No errors logged and no damage detected by their inspection. They all said "bring me the car while the issue is still on, so I can better inspect". Unfortunately, this is random and always have happened far from their shops, so it's a bit risky for me to drive without power steering for too long.

I went ahead and bought an iCarsoft MB V3.0 (after some research) since it will be handy to have it anyways and I plugged it in while having the power steering error. Before watching the video, you should know that my car is missing the front radar (behind the star emblem), I think it's called DISTRONIC, so some of the errors are related to this one.

I'm doing some random things while recording, since I'm still learning to use the tool, so just skip any unrelated part of the video:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/15jv...n2ImSpigm/view

Two things that caught my attention are:

• If I connect the iCarsoft while not having the error, I also see an EPS (Electronic Power Steering) (N68) module in the diagnostic menu. While when the error is present, this option is missing from the menu, like the diagnostic tool is not detecting this module at all.
• An error related to power steering appears under PTS - Parktronic (N62): "Communication With Control Unit 'Power Steering' Has A Malfunction"
  • This makes me think: Does this whole issue come from a faulty PTS or the PTS just throws this related error since it cannot contact an offline power steering module

I've seen some posts suggesting a battery change, but this didn't work for me. I had my battery changed 15 days ago (since my start/stop didn't function) and I still get the power steering issue every now and then.

Any ideas of what this might be or what should I check next to get more info around the issue? Even though the 10-minute-wait trick seems to always solve it, I would like to have this figured out since it's repetitive and it might be something that starts failing and these are just early signs.

Any help will be greatly appreciated!