2001-early 2002 power steering

Within a month of the 5-year expiration, I have had the opportunity to explore this topic. I got repeated power steering warning lights on a 2001 Prius, 91k miles, w/ a history of infrequent steering shakes. The P1513 trouble code was found.

Toyota initially did not approve this repair under warranty, and it is not really clear to me why not. I opened a case with the customer satisfaction people, and at their request faxed them a copy of the 'warranty enhancement letter' that I had received long ago. Our "IFixEm" in Olympia WA also worked the matter through internal channels, and he got the OK first. Then my 'caseworker' came to the same conclusion. Part is now in hand, to be installed Monday.

Lessons learned: If you have 2001-early 2002 you should have received such a letter. If so guard it carefully. If not, might be a good idea to contact 800-331-4331 to see if you should have received it. For a while, I was convinced that without that letter in hand (with my VIN on it), my claim might have been denied. If you end up having the conversation with 'customer satisfaction', apparently you should direct their attention to the 'warranty policy bulletin'. For some reason they thought I was talking about 'recall' so take care to not say that word. I specifically asked about what is the right&wrong terminology to use when discussing this problem.

Should you get the PS warning lights and lose power steering assist on the road, you can clear the screen (at least temporarily) by rebooting. I convinced myself that one could also delay its return by putting the front wheels on dirt or gravel and 'scuffing' the front tires with large, abrupt steering wheel turns. This is consistent with getting the torque sensor poteniometers to move, which should quiet them down (at least for a while). If you do this on pavement it will scrub off some tire tread, and there is no advantage in that.

Finally, check on your own vehicle's original in-service date, because you don't want to come in a day late on this one. Total cost would be $2000 plus.

 

Agreeing with Frank. AFAIK Toyota had fixed whatever was wrong by 2003 and apparently by sometime in 2002. I'm thinking that both the steering and accelerator pedals started out with bad potentiometers.