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From a safety point of view I wouldn't drive the car any distance at all. I had a temporary 'steering assist failure' on my C-Max once - some sort of glitch which never repeated itself - and the steering was so heavy I had trouble just pulling over to a safe spot. (It was fine after I'd turned off the ignition and restarted the car).
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The reason your PAS failed is probably due to water contamination to the electrical pump that powers the PAS.
Don't drive the car with PAS failure - get the AA or RAC to take it to a main line dealer.
The C-MAX seems to have a major reliability/safety issue with PAS - read what happend to us last week...
My wife was driving our children home on a dark country road when without any warning what-so-ever, her C-Max power assisted steering and ABS brakes simultaneously failed. I am not talking about heavy steering here ? the brake peddle went hard and the steering wheel would not move more than 10 to 15 degrees from centre. Fortunately my wife was cool headed enough to eventually bring the car to a halt from around 35mph before careering into a ditch or having a ?head-on? with an on-coming articulated lorry.
She re-started the engine and managed to limp the car home the last half mile. I tried to start the car on our drive and noticed a burning electrical smell, I also got no response from the starter motor. We called Green Flag rescue services. They arrived within 20 minutes and their engineer concluded that the vehicle had suffered either a power steering pump failure or total electrical failure and in any case it was unsafe to drive. I called the local Ford main line dealer (I will not name them as they are not at fault) and explained our predicament ? they advised that we get Green Flag to drop the car round to them ? which we did.
The next morning the dealer suggested we get in touch with Ford Customer relations re warranty and courtesy car arrangements. Ford were initially very ?defensive? and their attitude unhelpful ? only after I threatened to call Trading Standards and the DOT vehicle safety agency did they start to soften their stance and we got the warranty repair and courtesy car we are entitled to.
The fault turns out to be a burnt-out alternator which was not charging the battery and subsequently not providing enough power to the Power Steering, Engine Management System, ABS or warning sensors (i.e. Alternator/Battery Charge Indicators). Ford are now back-peddling on their agreement to provide a courtesy car pending repairs (even though it is covered under warranty).
Our car is a 2006 model still under warranty with less that 24K on the clock and serviced in accordance with the manufacturer?s specifications. Needless to say this will be our first and last new car purchase from Ford.
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something to be said for belt driven power steering then it seems.
Good presense of mind by the wife.
James
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>he C-MAX seems to have a major reliability/safety issue with PAS - read what happend to us last week...
But you didn't have a problem with a PAS failure. You had a major electrical failure that would have crippled any make of car with electric PAS. Like my VAG group Seat for example.
You can blame ford for customer relations failure, but not for a burned out alternator.
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You can blame ford for customer relations failure but not for a burned out alternator.>>
Quite,
Leaving aside the 'it could have killed everyone' hyperbole, how long does it take to change an alternator?
Between them, the owner of the car, the dealer and Ford customer services seem to be making a lot more of this than there needs to be
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Yet another relatively new Ford with a faulty alternator. Add it to the list of ohc Ka's, Transit Connects etc that seem prone to this. Not so long ago, alternators for the newer shape Ka's were rare as rocking horse doo.
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I do not understand drivers going through deep water, anything above the bottom of the cat is totally madness in my book. To drive with water up to the wheel arches is madness. You were Lucky you did not ingest water into the inlet air duck, hydraulically lock the engine and bend all the con rods. end of engine. Regards Peter
Edited by Peter D on 16/12/2008 at 19:09
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