Dexter1110

I had an unpleasant event with my 3 month old 3,300 km SQ5 yesterday and I'm posting this because I haven't found anything like it in threads and I would have liked to know that this could happen. Had this happened at higher speed this could have been dangerous, and advanced warning may help others.

On a cold Saturday morning (-21C) I warmed the SQ5 for 10 mins before packing the family and heading out. First kilometer was fine. After heading up a steep hill I made a stop, turned right, and the red steering wheel fault light came on with 3 warning beeps. The steering wheel became extremely stiff and could not turn enough to avoid a parked car in the opposite lane. Luckily there was little traffic and I was able to simply stop before hitting the car. I backed up and experimented with the steering wheel to realize it was barely steerable but only with a LOT of force. Under the red fault warning a message said to stop driving the car immediately. No kidding, had we been on an offramp at 100+ km/h this could have been a high velocity accident!

Audi "care" as usual is simply a polite voice on the line, and said the delay for towing was 90 mins. That seemed too long a wait with a 2 year-old in the back seat at -21C so I took the car back home slowly using the early morning deserted side streets. Audi "care" had also said that the car would sit in the dealership lot until it reopened on Monday morning so I put the car in the garage overnight hoping that warming it up would prove helpful. No luck as the same red fault message and rock hard steering response remained, so on Sunday I called back Audi "care" for a flatbed tow truck. To make this story complete, the first guy who showed up came in a CAA van (no flatbed) wanting to boost the car... Finally, after a polite exchange of words with the polite voice on the line and another 90 mins later, the SQ5 was on a flatbed on the way towards the dealership.

So the aim of this post is to warn people that if the electromechanical steering system fails while driving the steering wheel will become rock hard and barely responsive. Be ready to steer with all your strength... At the present time I'm not certain whether I still trust this car will keep the family safe.

55cadillacking

I'm very interested to hear how the dealership follows up. Keep us posted. I'm glad you are all safe.

Dexter1110

Thank you for the concern. Dealership was on the ball calling this (Monday) morning at 7:20 to say they had it in hand and were taking it in. The mechanic did not seem impressed, however, and mentioned she will be squeezing it in between appointments as I did not have an appointment myself... I must have suggested talking to Transport Canada about the issue since I considered it a serious hazard before she lightened up and said she would call me with an update. At 14:00 no news.

Reading other posts I noticed similar issues on older models when a line blew/leaked and all fluid was lost. All other reports seem to be when the engine was fired, before people tried leaving their parking space. Nothing on the electromechanical steering system out since 2012-2013, which was supposed to avoid these problems (lots of complaints about notchiness, etc, but no issues on my side before the sudden malfunction). One thing is sure, turning the wheels on the SQ5 even a few degrees when this red fault symbol is lit seems to be significantly more difficult than on the older mechanical version.

For reference the car has been pampered, parked indoors mostly and currently fitted with 19" winter tires and OEM winter rims (21" in summer), all sold and installed by the dealership, and has never seen the side of a curb or a significant pothole.

I'll post the dealerships response when available.

55cadillacking

Good for you to conduct all this research. Keep us all updated as things progress.

Nicolas

Wow, I hope all goes well and once it's repaired that nothing ever goes wrong with it again.

cooper

Thank you very much for posting. I look forward to hearing the outcome / dealership feedback.

Dexter1110

Got the car back from the dealership tonight. All I have for now is the printed report which is surprisingly detailed but some questions remain. There is an issue with communications from this specific dealership (maybe other Audi dealerships as well?). I got a call at work around 13:00 telling me "the steering is fixed"; when I asked for details the caller read from the report that there was some "steering issues" that were fixed... I was tight for time and figured I would clarify the details when I went in. At 18:00 only salespeople and the receptionist were around so the written report had to do. I'll speak to the mechanic tomorrow however.

I'm impressed to get a blow-by-blow account of what the mechanic/technician did at each specific timestamp on the report. They replaced the steering rack (2h of work) and the J500 control module (3h of work). I get to see that the technician updated software with bulletin 2027779/5 (steering rack) and was unable to do "end stops adaptation" because he/she screwed-up on the scanner version. After checking with the supervisor the proper scanner version was used and the "end-stops adaptation" was properly done. Then he/she was unable to perform "J500 adaptation" but supervisor said all is good...

The drive back home was good, although its back to the future as I feel the first few inches of travel on the gas pedal are now unresponsive. This was the case in early september when the car was new but had disappeared through what I assumed was some form of high-level adaptation of the vehicle. I'll give it a few days to see if this falls back into place. The steering is fine although I can't say I've yet put it through its paces.

If anything else that may be useful comes up I'll post again.

BTW I asked 2 other issues to be looked at: 1) getting an oil level read was really complex and they responded in writing in the report: apparently you need to heat the car to normal operating temperature, then turn it off, then put ignition to on for 2 minutes... and THEN you get a read... I'd pay for a dipstick option any day; 2) keyless entry/lock never worked well: lock was fine but entry rarely worked; I tried pulling on the lever to "wake-up" the car, "reprogramming" by putting the key module in the ignition, nothing worked. Well, the right front exterior door handle sensor was producing an intermittent "implausible" signal that was SNAFU'ing the system. There is a "technical bulletin" on this (translation: screw up that we will fix only if you call us on this; bulletin 2033883/1) and I am waiting on the parts for the fix to come...

To be clear I'm certain that this is not unique to Audi, but for $80K I want this thing to drive itself - and my family - safely...

Dexter1110

To conclude on this I returned to the dealership service on Friday to complete the fix on the keyless/entry lock as they were waiting on delivery of a part. As a reminder, the keyless "unlock" would not function well, and in addition when I washed the SQ5 the doors would cycle lock/unlock if the keys were in my pocket and I stood close to the car (not touching the handles of course, or even the car for that matter). That was fixed and now it works perfectly.
I had a sit-down with the manager to find out if the initial steering problem (J500/steering rack issue with full loss of power steering) was common and how this could happen at 3,500 km. In short, no brilliant answer, "these things just happen"...

RichardD

I have a Q5 2013, 8000km and I got exactly the same problem on Jan. 1st, 2 days after and oïl change where I got the recalls 48k8 and 24ad.

When I started the car, I got the same error message and the steering was really hard to use. I restarted the car 4-5 times and finally the message cleared and the power steering was back.

I went to the dealer today and they found two error :

one in the Power steering control module (VAG01309)
and one in Electromechanical power steering motor Open circuit C10AE13, symptom 7343409, status 00001000

the reflashed the recall 48k8, did 5-10 min. of tests on the car and told me I am good to go.

I don't have high expectation about the resolution of the problem...

Dexter1110

Seems to be some grumbling surrounding EMS responsiveness and a bit of a "pull" away from true center at highway speeds on Q5 (not much on SQ5 buch I think EMS is identical) with an update around october/november that improved steering responsiveness. Perhaps this is what they updated on yours? None of the posts on this describe any failures though... What you and I experienced seems different. They did not replace the J500 or the steering rack as they did in mine? Sometimes the dealership techs seem to do the work based on the bulletins but have trouble explaining what actually occurred... Not too reassuring. Thanks for posting. I'll be curious to see if other Q5/SQ5s have similar issues.