Discussion posts

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Subaru steering angle sensor repair

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This is regarding Subaru steering angle sensors which can "fail" after turning the steering wheel "too far"

Long story short, if you turn the steering wheel further than is normally possible in the car, for example by disconnecting the steering knuckle, then the steering angle sensor will set a permanent fault within its storage
This could be extremely useful for example if a car was involved in a crash, or a legitimate failure of the sensor, but not when the cause of the issue is known to be a small accident

Subaru and people on the internet suggest that the sensors are easily damaged, and that fitting a new steering angle sensor is the only fix, which is not true
(I have seen an invoice for around £800 for a steering angle sensor and airbag ring fitted...)


The specific sensor in this case is marked as V416 Tokai Rika Japan, used in a 2006 car, but probably applies to others

Looking at the insides of the sensor, it is not easy to actually break these

On the underside of the PCB it has an eeprom 93LC66BI, it is a 93LC66B really then marked I for industrial temperature range

In this case the DCCD module was reporting fault code P1767


By changing the EEPROM data at address 0x20: 0xa5a55a5a to 0xffffffff cleared the fault, the DCCD module is no longer reporting an issue

I would think there is a CAN packet that would clear the steering sensor fault, which would be sent by the DCCD module after you doing a normal diagnostic call to the DCCD, but this is not currently known


EEPROM dump:

00000000: ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff  ................
00000010: ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff  ................
00000020: a5a5 5a5a ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff  ..ZZ............
00000030: ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff  ................
00000040: 0001 fffe ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff  ................
00000050: ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff  ................
00000060: 00e5 ff1a ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff  ................
00000070: ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff  ................
00000080: ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff  ................
00000090: ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff  ................
000000a0: 0383 0380 037a 0372 0368 0358 0348 0335  .....z.r.h.X.H.5
000000b0: 0324 0309 02f1 02d4 02bf 029e 0282 0267  .$.............g
000000c0: 024b 022c 020c 01ed 01cd 01ad 018c 016e  .K.,...........n
000000d0: 0156 013a 011d 0103 00eb 00d7 00c3 00b0  .V.:............
000000e0: 00a2 0096 008b 0082 007d 007b 007b 007f  .........}.{.{..
000000f0: 0085 008e 0099 00a7 00b9 00cc 00e2 00f7  ................
00000100: 0112 0129 0145 0162 0181 01a0 01c0 01e1  ...).E.b........
00000110: 0203 0221 0241 0260 0283 029f 02ba 02d8  ...!.A.`........
00000120: 02f3 030b 0320 0334 0347 0358 0365 0371  ..... .4.G.X.e.q
00000130: 037a 037f 0382 ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff  .z..............
00000140: 020b 0230 0251 0271 028e 02b2 02ce 02eb  ...0.Q.q........
00000150: 0302 031f 0334 034c 0359 036b 0378 0381  .....4.L.Y.k.x..
00000160: 0388 038c 038f 038e 038a 0383 0379 036c  .............y.l
00000170: 0361 0350 033c 0327 0310 02f8 02de 02c1  .a.P.<.'........
00000180: 02a7 028b 026d 024c 022a 020a 01ea 01c7  .....m.L.*......
00000190: 01a9 018b 016c 014f 0130 0113 00f7 00e0  .....l.O.0......
000001a0: 00c8 00b6 00a3 0092 0083 0078 006f 006b  ...........x.o.k
000001b0: 0069 006a 0070 0077 0084 0092 00a2 00b6  .i.j.p.w........
000001c0: 00ce 00e4 00fc 0118 0136 0153 0174 0196  .........6.S.t..
000001d0: 01ba 01db 01fe ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff  ................
000001e0: ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff  ................
000001f0: ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff  ................

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