[mazeroni]

Looks like I just picked up a similar issue in my Series 10. I hate to dredge up a post from a few months ago, but I figure more input will help in the long run. For the record, I'm at 68K miles and I get a lot of groaning as I turn the wheel. That seems normal for our cars, but not sure if it factors into things.

My issue: It died on startup last Friday while pulling out of my spot to go home. I thought I ran over the sloped curb pulling out of my spot because I felt a small jolt through the wheel and assumed I did something. I was far away from the curb, btw. Restarted the car and no other problems all weekend. I even went for a long drive to try and get it to happen again.

Then I drove for about 25 minutes today, came to a red and right as the light went green it died. This afternoon, on my way to the store, it died again going out of my apartment parking lot. So I drove straight to Toyota with the issue, but they can't look at until tomorrow.

Interestingly, as I was leaving the dealer, I restarted the car, and the PS light came on, but I still got assist for about 60 seconds, then it started to decrease until it died as I was turning to get into traffic. During my drive home, I occasionally felt it assisting at low speeds before it crapped out again. I will also add that the wheel does want to center itself sometimes. Other times it doesn't. I didn't get to test this very much.

I'm hoping that they can pull a code and that it is just a sensor or similar easy and cheap fix.

The full cost to replace a motor is probably like $700?


*** Post mortem update

It is a bad ECU > $1200 total for parts and labor.