Lose Power Steering problems of the 2009 Buick Enclave

Car lost power steering at low speed when making turns.

The contact owns a 2009 Buick Enclave. While driving 25 mph, the vehicle lost power steering and became difficult to turn. The vehicle was taken to an independent mechanic. The vehicle was repaired; however, the failure recurred. The manufacturer was not notified of the failure. The failure mileage was 124,180.

I was coming up to turn into my driveway and lost power steering. This condition about led me to hit another car. At higher rpms the power steering comes back but at an idle or just above it requires great effort to turn the vehicle.

We intermittently lose power steering at low speeds. So far we have not hit anything, but have come close at intersections, in parking lots, and in driveways. I am not sure when it first happened. Maybe about a year ago. At the beginning, it was once in a while. Now just about every trip we have an incident. Power steering reservoir is full and pump appears to be working properly. When I told the dealer of the issue I am having, they recommended changing the pump and gear at an approximate cost of $2,000. As an engineer, I found it hard to believe that both the pump and gear needs replacing. I did some research online and found that many people with same issue who did change pump and gear still had the same issue. Further research leads me to believe that the power steering system has a design is defect that needs to be addressed by national highway traffic safety administration (NHTSA). The Enclave and other gm vehicles have a variable effort steering (ves) system that varies the amount of effort to steer the vehicle. Apparently the steering gear valve solenoid can stick causing lose of steering with no warning. I recommend that NHTSA requires gm to either replace ves system with a highly reliable design or disable the system to reduce possibility of having an accident due to power steering failure. Nhtsa is welcome to use my vehicle to analyze the issue.

While turning (both left and right) at low speeds the vehicle randomly loses power steering control and becomes very difficult to complete the turn. Completing the turns becomes so difficult, my wife has to stop the vehicle forward motion and back up, or when crossing traffic, has to continue in a straight path from where control was lost and hope she can make it across to avoid a wreck. Times of occurrence are at random when making turns across traffic from low speeds, turning in parking lots and any other time low speed turns are required. Frequency seems to be increasing as time goes on.

The steering wheel started to make a rubbing, squeaking sound upon turning left or right at low speeds. By the next day, I had lost power steering completely at low speeds. I went to make a turn, thinking I had power steering and almost got in an accident because I was unable to turn the car as quickly as usual. It was so scary! I took the car to the dealer who has had it in the shop the last four days. They are replacing the entire steering column. I hope that will solve the problem, but after reading tons of complaints online at Buick Enclave forums, I fear that this issue is widespread and is an on-going problem, no matter how many "fixes" at the dealership.

My husband went to make a right hand turn and when he turned he lost power steering and the abs light, traction control icon, brake light and "service all wheel drive" all came on at the same time. My dash looks like a christmas tree.