Q: Electrical issues, power steering shuts off & car stalls.

asked by on September 29, 2016

My car currently has just over 65,000 miles. At 60,000 miles I had to have the turbo replaced at the dealership. Since then I've had the following issues:

When driving at different speeds, the radio goes on & off randomly. A few times while driving the power steering shuts off & car revs to 5k rpm before stalling out. The "Service Stabilitrack System" light pops up on my dash. Then today after all of the above happened, I put it in park & attempted to take the key out to restart the car but the key was stuck in the ignition. My car had no power, my hazard lights wouldn't even work. Afrer about 10 minutes the car regained power & I was able to restart the car.

This has been happening intermittently for a few months now, but recently has been happening every day. I got a new battery less than a month ago & have done all suggested maintenance.

Occasionally the warning light for the anti theft system will come on too.

Any input would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

My car has 65000 miles.
My car has an automatic transmission.

It is most likely a coincidence that these problems began happening after the turbo was replaced. However, it is possible something that occurred during the diagnosis or repair of the turbo may have created all these problems. Regardless, with the different systems that are being affected, it is likely you have a bad ground or a bad connection in a wiring harness connector. These sort of random symptoms can be very difficult to figure out. So much so that if anyone were to hazard a guess, it is just that a guess. Your car needs a thorough diagnosis by an experienced technician.

I would personally be looking at the main power connection near the battery. I would need to spend some time studying the wiring diagrams for your car to make a decision where to begin. This could be as simple as a bad connection at the battery or as complicated as narrowing it down to a specific electronic module. There is no way to know without your car in front of me.

This isn’t a maintenance issue. I would however take it back to the shop that replaced the turbo. If they aren’t any help, I recommend having one of our mobile technicians come to you and diagnose the issues with your electrical components.

I usually take a little time to do some research from various sources that are available only to technicians, and I hit on one that described yours almost exactly. Apparently the fix is a bad connection on the negative battery cable. The person who reported this repair replaced the entire negative cable. But this isn’t always necessary. Many times cables can be repaired. Even so, bad connections are often not visually apparent. This why we have electrical instruments for testing, so I still recommend the electrical inspection above to help you out.

Good luck!

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