Today I went out to the car and turn on the ignition and nothing, no steering wheel unlock and nothing on the dash board. The battery is 12.7V, all lights and radio work. After reading on the internet, the steering lock actuator is sleeping and doesn’t turn on. We need to wake it up by using Obdeleven to clear the code for it to wake up. The reason for this to happen because of the ESP light keep coming on because of the MAF I replaced a few months ago failed again. Here is the trick to be able to scan the failures and clear the code. The code is 00288 – Steering Column Lock Actuator.
1. Turn on the hazard (emergency) lights on blinking.
2. Plug-in the OBDEleven and the App to connect.
3. While it’s connecting it won’t detect the Q7, so we have to select the Q7 and press the brake pedal and hold the high beam stalk to ON.
4. It will scan 33 modules and when it’s done (we can release the high beam), go to module 18 Start Engine Stop – Steering Column Lock Actuator will have error.
5. Try to clear the error but it said we have to turn on the ignition, then we put the key in the ignition and turn it on even nothing happens. Now we can clear the code and the steering column actuator turns on and all the lights are on the dash and we can start the car.
This is the temporary fix, if the ESP light comes back again, it will happen again. There’s another way to permanently disable the steering column actuator by cutting the power RED/BLACK going into the module while the engine is running, which means the steering column will never be locked when ignition is off. So it’s no longer secured. I’ll do this one of these days or if it happens again.
