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Just had another issue on the car. Steering wheel will move in/out with using the adjustment lever but will not move up or down. It give a little clunk but seems locked in place.
Anyone seen this issue? Is there a TSB on the issue ? is there a way to reset the position sensor via tOBD ?
Give it a few good whacks downwards while pushing on the switch down. It happened on mine a few months ago and it worked. ‘Don’t know why and how, but that made it work again. Don’t be gentle either...!
Give it a few good whacks downwards while pushing on the switch down. It happened on mine a few months ago and it worked. ‘Don’t know why and how, but that made it work again. Don’t be gentle either...!
2015 Audi S4, 1982 Fiat Spyder, 2010 R350, 2013 E550 Cabriolet
It happened to me on my 2013 cab a few months after buying it a little over a year ago. A local indy shop told me this is common. They had one of their employees who was skilled at it. He lubed it up and pushed and banged on it while using the switch and it got free. They said frequently it does not work and you have to by a new assembly. It has never happened on my 2010 R350 with 160k miles.
I had this problem. It appears the motor drives (screws) the steering wheel up until it stops, but as many things you screw until they stop, it takes more force to break the stiction and unscrew than it did to tighten it.
I heard it's supposed to be programmable so it will raise the wheel but stop before the screw mechanism bottoms out, true or not this didn't happen with mine and I assume yours.
The fix is to simply give it a nudge to break that stiction. You can try to hit the wheel, but I'd imagine hitting the wheel up, not down, would be the way to do it. Hitting down is putting even more pressure on the nut/screw that is stuck, but it does shock it which is no doubt why it sometimes works. So try hitting it up as well and see what happens.
Back to the nudge part. There's a motor with a flex-shaft that drives it up/down. You can see the motor try to turn the flex shaft in an attempt to lower the wheel, but as mentioned it doesn't have the power to break it free. So note the direction it's trying to turn, and give it a nudge with a wrench. If aft looking fwd it should be clockwise. Do not allow the motor to run with a wrench on there because as soon as it breaks free it'll start spinning fast and take the wrench with it. So nudge it, remove the wrench, then push the down lever and it should be good to go. I used a little 4" adjustable wrench because it's a tight fit under there, plus I didn't want to fumble around for the correct size so the all-sixteenths is perfect. Or all-mm in this case? You want to turn the steel sleeve that is crimped down on the flex-shaft, which is a six sided crimp so a wrench fits well.
To get in there you have to remove the large black plastic cover under the steering wheel assy that separates your legs from all the stuff under the dash. A gross est is it's maybe 20" around and sorta squarish. It simply had several Torx screws, I think T20? That part was easy to remove but the hood lever is attached. Getting the hood lever out, with its one screw, was easy. Getting it screwed back in not so much. I told myself if I ever had to do this again I'd try to do it without removing the hood lever. I removed it because I wasn't sure what it would look like in there, or what I needed to do, so I needed the cover out so I could get a good look. So with this description and the pix I imagine you can try it without removing the hood lever, but up to you. Note; the pix shows the steering wheel assy upside down, and the left side is pointing to the front of the car. Basically just look for that flex shaft, which the motor will torque on when you push the down lever. I did mine many months ago, maybe a year, and it hasn't caused me any trouble since. If it does you can simply turn off the auto-raise/lower function, which I forgot what it's called but I believe it's in the dash menu options.
I didn't lube anything because it all looked fine. Not sure grease would help anyway but I guess it won't hurt. What kind of grease I don't know but I imagine it's white lithium.
The arrow is pointing to the threaded part, which if I recall, you can't see here in the up position because it has a spring around it, which is what you do see. When unthreaded (lowered) you can see the threaded shaft. The white piece to the right of the arrow is the nut that threads up/dwn it. The black piece to the left is a bearing which holds the shaft from moving fwd/aft. So when the motor spins the "nut" moves fwd/aft. If you look at the other pix you can see that in turn moves the cast alum piece it's attached to, which is basically a lever to move the steering up/dwn.
It's possible there's a steel nut inside that white plastic piece, but I just assumed it was all plastic.
The way I saw it, since it all seemed good, is I'd wait and see if it did it again, then I'd worry about lube or whatever.
The shaft should be good since imo it's much stronger than the motor so it should last forever. I think once you see it run it'll answer a lot of questions, including why it locks up. I believe the spring is there to help prevent it from locking up, but not certain.
I also assume the stiction is in the white nut, but it could also be in the black bearing or a combination of both. If it's a good bearing then I doubt it's the issue, but if it's something simple like an E or C-clip with washers on either side then it's likely part of the problem. Feel free to take it all part and post pix I'm curious to see, but enough to open it up.
Another view to help understand how the nut and other parts actually move the wheel up/dwn. Again, remember the assy is upside down in the pix and the wheel is in the up position.
Note you can see the back side of the nut here, which also has a spring
Good to hear you got it working. Ironically, mine locked up a couple days after saying mine hasn't done it since. I guess I jinxed myself... I pushed the down lever and hit the wheel hard in the upward direction and it freed up.
I'm not sure if grease will help but when the wheel is all the way down you should be able to see the exposed threads where I noted in the picture. I'd just apply a little grease on those threads. The reason I'm not sure it'll help is because the motor seems to be torquing 100% to tighten, then like any fastener it typically needs a little more than that to break free. So if lubed it would simply be able to tighten even more, but then still need more than that to unscrew. Only one way to find out, and since I don't believe lube will hurt it in any way, I say go for it. And don't forget there's a bearing of some sort in the black plastic section, which I believe you'd have to take apart to lube. So the problem could be in there, maybe not, again there's only one way to find out.
If the motor does have a programmed limit, like 10 turns and stop, and lets say it was turning 9.9 and hitting max tq, then with lube it's possible it won't hit max tq and go to 10 turns and stop like it should. If so, it's a programmed stop, not a max tq stop, then it would have more tq available unscrew than where it stopped. Make sense? This is assuming the story about it being programmed to stop at a certain point is true, which is certainly possible, but I'm wary.
It could be, and this is how I'd do it: I'd make it so when tightening (going up) it has less voltage than when going down, that way it would always have more tq to break it free. But then if that were the case I'm guessing it would never stick. So I'm just stabbing in the dark with theories, and since I'm unwilling to take it apart I guess I'll never know. Normally I love taking things apart to see what makes them tick, and I especially love modifying them to work better, but I really don't have the time or motivation to do it on this item. But my experience tinkering with a great many things over decades is how and why I have the theories I have shared.
I did want to mention one last thing, in the attached pix. If the wheel goes all the way until it binds to a stop, then odds are this spot is where that happens (yellow arrow). It's notched to allow additional upward movement. When raising the wheel the part that looks like a handle moves fwd (red arrow) into the notch. I'd imagine it's nothing more than a stop, but if it also scrapes then it's an issue. I guess just look at it, if it has a spot where it's just hitting then I'd call it good, but if you see scrape marks then I'd grease it.
Tried that, but it did not work. Banged pretty hard too..
I just encountered this issue on my 2015 E400 Cabrio. Tried a sharp hit from above with no results. Gave it a good hit from the bottom and it immediately came free and works fine.
Mine has gotten stuck many times, but pulling downward usually got it free. This time, it was stuck for a week until I tried pushing the wheel steadily upward while pressing the lever downward, which makes sense if you think about the mechanism. Thanks a million to those who figured this out! Put the mallets away!
WOW. Put my knees beneath the wheel and pushed up while pulling down on the control handle. Less than 15 seconds and it was working just fine. Thank you for the suggestion.
articulated column assy
Folks, I just got done analyzing what makes these steering column jam.
It had been super clunky since factory new. I've had my dealer apply a TSB repair without improvement so I disabled the convenience to preserve my electricals.
This modern steering column has 2 motions :
In/out : Telescopic length
Up/Down: Tilt position
> WHAT:
True to tradition, these units are very well assembled to specifications. This prevent the many parts in use from causing problems. Overall the column translating surfaces werenicely loose and well lubricated. The problems were concentrated on the controls shafts assemblies.
Multiplemanufacturing issues make this assembly act clunky and strain control motors:
Tight gap adjustements
Lack of lube
Assemblies out of alignment
Squeezed bearings
> Unjamming trick:
What jams the telescoping in/out is the way tilting must torque on the shaft to work.
To make things easier: SIMPLY REVERSE THE TILT a nudge to free the column shaft.
Doing this leaves the column in a neutral torque position and loosen the gaps necessary to slide in/out.
> Stop banging!
Personally I would refrain banging the steering wheel loose. Disable these functions is a better choice here until fixed.
The steering control modules feature many un-solderedelectronics and both spinning shafts slide into a brital plastic nuts.
Simply nudge tilt control before sliding in/out !
Lucky us the tiny plastic "dog-bone" design is no longer used but for some reasons, the list of issues has remained wholesome.
- Part II -
I will concentrate on the simple fixes.
Last edited by CaliBenzDriver; 03-18-2022 at 12:36 PM.
Reason: Unjamming tip
articulated column assy
Folks, I just got done analyzing what makes these steering column jam.
It had been super clunky since factory new. I've had my dealer apply a TSB repair without improvement so I disabled the convenience to preserve my electricals.
This modern steering column has 2 motions :
In/out : Telescopic length
Up/Down: Tilt position
> WHAT:
True to tradition, these units are very well assembled to specifications. This prevent the many parts in use from causing problems. Overall the column translating surfaces werenicely loose and well lubricated. The problems were concentrated on the controls shafts assemblies.
Multiplemanufacturing issues make this assembly act clunky and strain control motors:
Tight gap adjustements
Lack of lube
Assemblies out of alignment
Squeezed bearings
> Unjamming trick:
What jams the telescoping in/out is the way tilting must torque on the shaft to work.
To make things easier: SIMPLY REVERSE THE TILT a nudge to free the column shaft.
Doing this leaves the column in a neutral torque position and loosen the gaps necessary to slide in/out.
> Stop banging!
Personally I would refrain banging the steering wheel loose. Disable these functions is a better choice here until fixed.
The steering control modules feature many un-solderedelectronics and both spinning shafts slide into a brital plastic nuts.
Simply nudge tilt control before sliding in/out !
Lucky us the tiny plastic "dog-bone" design is no longer used but for some reasons, the list of issues has remained wholesome.
- Part II -
I will concentrate on the simple fixes.
Hey Cali,
My steering wheel was stuck in the up position yesterday, this is the third time in 9 years this has occurred. I was able each time to get it working again by applying pressure and a few moderate thumps on top and bottom with my palms, did you ever get yours fixed? You mentioned the TSB repair did not help much, I was just wondering if past pulling the lower panel and applying lithium grease to the threaded rod there were any other preventative maintenance techniques?
Hey Cali,
My steering wheel was stuck in the up position yesterday, this is the third time in 9 years this has occurred. I was able each time to get it working again by applying pressure and a few moderate thumps on top and bottom with my palms, did you ever get yours fixed? You mentioned the TSB repair did not help much, I was just wondering if past pulling the lower panel and applying lithium grease to the threaded rod there were any other preventative maintenance techniques?
Pierre, yes I wrote the part II where I fixed the built-in column problems with tons of pictures. Look under the regular W212 section.
It really needs to be adjusted more so than lubed. Spraying it won't do much.
This assembly comes misadjusted from factory then after a while the light grease that was helping along is totally evaporated.
Let me ask: what is wrong with yours ?
Is it the "In/out" or the "Tilt" motion?
If you don't want to pull out your whole column, I can help you get focussed after you read part II.
I've just moved to T-Mobile 5G cellular with the new Galaxy S23+ Unlimited international roaming data 👍... The "SmartSwitch" migration tool is a pale copy of what Apple iPhone delivers: only my phonebook transfered - Most Apps don't know me. I'm busy fixing my Android before Tahiti trip.
Last edited by CaliBenzDriver; 02-13-2023 at 01:55 AM.
Thank you Cali, I will look for that posting, my in and out has always worked fine, the only issue I've had is wit the easy entry feature binding in the up position, so stuck up. last time this happened was at least a couple years ago and I use the feature daily, so very intermittent, both of the last times, a small force was required, just some small palm bumps on the top and bottom, this time took more force and more palm smacks to resolve. Thanks for the help!
12-14-2019, 08:15 PM
I'm curious to see, but enough to open it up.
