Long time troller, first time posting.
anyways, I have an AP2 and live in Florida, stopped at the gas station this morning and left my car idling, when I came back out the wheel was bouncing off the lock and jittering. I have power steering to the left and basically no power steering to the right. If I “flick” the wheel it will jitter real bad. I was reading about this issue and was directed to removing the torque sensor housing and disassemble the spring and collar and clean the input shaft of the rack to make the repair. Have been a diese technician for 15 years but this is my only car and I have 1 day to work on it every week. I was just going to put a rack and pinion in it but they are insanely expensive. Does anybody know if this repair will fix my issue? Should I replace the rack and pinion? Does anybody have a rack to sell or know where I can get a reman for under 600$?


sorry for the long post. I don’t wanna crash my car

 

You don't need a whole new rack. You may be able to clean the torque sensor. It's a bit of a pain. The screws holding the unit are Japanese tamper proof bits, not torx.

 

The easiest way out may be to install a replacement rack. Buy one from eBay or a local junkyard that has a S2000. Keep yours as a spare and fix it.

Or...I think unplugging the EPS will work as a temporary fix.

 

I guarantee a new rack will not fix the problem.

As someone who has seen (and fixed) this first hand, the first step is to perform the torque-neutral-position relearn. It can be done with a paper clip.

The steering wheel bouncing around on it own is from a fluctuating or non-existent speed sensor input to the the EPS ECU.

On that note, the first thing to check is the ground wire on the back of the cylinder head (G101) it is directly responsible for speed signal fluctuations.

 

Things I would do, in order:

1. EPS re-learn procedure
2. Check the ground wire as Billman mentioned above
3. Clean and re-grease the EPS torque sensor. I did this, but my sensor was too far gone.
4. Replace the EPS torque sensor. This fixed my problem of only having power steering in one direction

 

Thanks Bilman, you were the guy I was hoping would comment on my thread. For many years I’ve seen you solve folks
issues in this site. This weekend I’ll try to do the re-learn procedure for the torque sensor,(checking that ground first). As far as the 45 degrees is concerned, are we taking about the steering wheel from center? Or the actual wheels of the car? I’m trying to find a video but am not having much luck.

anyway to check the torque sensor? I’ve never had the esp light come on. Thanks everyone for the very helpful replies.

 

Turn the steering wheel 45 degrees. Below is a good video that shows the procedure. It's confusing enough that I couldn't figure it out until I watched the video.

I don't think there's any way to "check" the torque sensor. Besides removing it from the car and cleaning/re-greasing it, or replacing it with a new one.