steering lock up

i had my steering lock up on my 2004 saturn ION and We had hit the curb
has any one else had this problem

Biker Geek wrote:
> On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 10:15:35 -0500, ilargmf > wrote:
>
>> i had my steering lock up on my 2004 saturn ION and We had hit the curb
>> has any one else had this problem
>
>
> Hopefully you weren't hurt in this incident.
>
> When you say "lock up", do you mean that the steering wheel
> "locked up" as in "couldn't turn", or the power assist failed,
> making the steering wheel very difficult (and maybe impossible,
> for someone with limited upper body strength) to turn? Those are
> two very decidedly different failure modes.
>
> No, I've not had either happen, although I'm still intrigued as
> to what the failure modes for the electrically-assisted power
> steering on my Ion might be. The common catastrophic failure
> mode for hydraulically assisted power steering is well
> known--drive belt snaps, presto, no more power assist, it takes
> a lot more effort to steer but you can do it.
>

I've managed to experience what happens when the fuse comes loose. I
hit a nasty bit of washboard and the next time I started the car, there
wasn't enough of a connection for the system to come on line...easy
enough fix in my case...pop open the fues box and remove then reinstall
the fuse...next time I turned the key, all was fine and dandy.

Michael

During a trip I bumped the key and it turned the car off. I didn't
think this was possible while the car was in motion, but the car turned
off. This shut down the power steering and with the road noise it was
difficult to tell that the car was off. I put it into neutral and
started it back up and continued on my way.

Andy