2010 LS460 AWD with air suspension, 190k miles, still runs and rides like new, replaced all rattling front control arms and air shocks and axles with China replacements last year, about 10,000 miles ago.

I've seen a few posts on this problem. All of a sudden the power steering is very hard and there's a warning on the dash to take it to my dealer. The problem is I live in northern Wyoming. The closest dealer is 400 miles away. I have a good local but not computer technical mechanic that I like to use for normal things, but I expect this steering issue is over his head. I'm 65 and don't want to dig into this myself, but I can check connections and that sort of thing. The car looked great until a hailstorm last year, I don't carry collision insurance on it, so it really doesn't have a lot of value anymore.

What are my options? I will drive it a while and see if it is usable. This happened to my wife and she really can't drive it anymore.

 

Do you have any issues with the battery or generator? Can you pull any fault codes from your car? Sometimes EPS failure can be triggered by something else.

 

I would have a look at the bellows on the tie rods to see if one or both of them are cracked or torn, water or snow getting in there is bad news. That and the electrical connectors are really all you can inspect at the rack itself. I'm pretty sure on a 2010 the vgrs is part of the rack and the assembly is non serviceable.

 

I had to replace my steering rack with VGRS not that long ago. It took a while and Techstream is a must for torque sensor and VGRS calibration.

 

The easiest thing is to have it checked out by a dealer to try to eliminate the guess work. And then decide if it's worth fixing or not.

 

Never had any charging or battery issues of any kind.

 

As stated in the question, dealer access is very difficult.

 

What you're saying is that even if I find a local mechanic to replace the rack, he'll need Techstream to finish the job. Rats.

 

Other than hard steering, will it drive forever like this? I drove it to an appointment this evening and think that I could live with it like this for a while. It would be fine for highway driving. It has almost new Blizzak winter tires on it that I'd like to wear out! It is the best winter driving car that I've ever owned. I'll have it diagnosed at a local shop that I like and trust.

 

Yes. Your local mechanic will need a Techstream. With that being said, Techstream is standard Toyota / Lexus diagnostic software and if you local mechanic works on Toyotas he probably has it.

 

Update from my point of view: It has been about two weeks since the power steering stopped working while my wife was driving. Since then, I've put about 200 miles on it because it is OK on the highway. For two of the many trips, the steering was working fine! It was odd that it wasn't consistently broken.

My mechanic, Ben, is independent and only 1/2 level above shade tree status. His yard is full of old cars and trucks and half finished projects that he'll get to someday. He's probably in his 30's, feeds his cattle on a ranch every other day, usually has a dog in the truck with him. I like him because he is naturally very smart and has the rare ability to dig through the internet muck and get to the bottom of very difficult technical problems. He dug in deep on this one. I watched him for a few minutes when he first started looking at the car. He started with the basics of checking to see if it was a simple problem. He saw that all the wiring looked good and solid and it was unlikely to be a wiring problem. He diagnosed the source to be the EPS - power steering module. He found one in a junkyard in Washington on the same model as my car - 2010 AWD with air suspension - for $175. It is on the way. In the meantime, he discovered that if you move the steering wheel while starting the car it fools the module enough that the power steering works. It is easy enough to do that I considered not having it fixed. He says the EPS is an easy swap and we'll see if it fixes it the right way. Meanwhile - the work-around is good enough for daily use of the car.

 

I don't think Ben's fooling anything by doing that, has he ruled out any possibility of any binding from the outer tie-rod end/axles/ball joints etc? has he inspected the rack boots and removed the electrical connectors on the rack to check for corrosion?
Sometimes a module will fail but that's not usually the problem in general but quite a few people like to try that solution first instead of last, I'm not sure if that would be pnp but even if it is an initialization/calibration would be needed so Ben should get techstream.

 

I've lived with Ben's solution for 5 days and drive the car all the time. It really works! Move the steering wheel both directions a couple of times while the engine is starting and the power steering works. Leave the wheel alone while starting and the power steering doesn't work. Every time. We've probably started it 20 times in the last 5 days. It feels like a position sensor problem inside the steering rack, though if that were the case, I'd expect the problem to go away if started when the front wheels weren't pointed straight ahead. Just guessing.

Most of the front suspension components were replaced last year, though I don't know about ball joints. I'll have him take a look. The front suspension was thoroughly inspected prior to all the work being done. I'd expect they would have replaced the ball joints if they found a problem.

I'll be driving it like this for 1000 miles next weekend.

 

This person had a similar problem and claims he fixed it with no parts but yanking on the steering wheel caused some issues also.

https://www.clublexus.com/forums/ls-...k-problem.html

 

General update: I chased down the VIN and ordered the correct steering rack for AWD with air suspension from LexusPartsNow. $2629 OEM part. My shade tree mechanic (he rents a shop that I own) installed it yesterday and it seems flawless! It works exactly like it should with zero check engine codes. There used to be a front end rattle that sounded like the left end of the left front axle was rattling. It was an almost new axle so I received an almost free replacement. Now that I've driven the car 10 miles it sure seems like that rattle is gone and I don't need to replace the axle. I'll update this discussion with labor cost and whatever comments the mechanic has about the process.

The car sat in the yard at my shop for a few months waiting for the mechanic to find time to install it. In that time the steering rack stopped working altogether. It could not be steered even a little bit. My mechanic used our forklift to move the front end around so he could pull it into the shop and put it on the lift.