The other night, I turned into a parking lot and felt like my steering wheel was locking up. Kinda like when your car dies out, only thing was my car was running fine. I checked the power steering fluid level and everthing looks fine. Anybody know what this could have been?

 

Happens to me in the morning when i pull out of the driveway. Might be cause of the cold.

 

Just curious cause it never happened to me before. It was -10 that night with the wind chill. So your probably right, thanks

 

fluid was probably cold as hell

 

I live in Toronto, Canada, it dips down to -30 here, and my car never does that..so I don't think that's the problem.

 

PS belt is slipping a bit, maybe.

 

my mom does the same thing, its cuz she doesnt know how to turn out of a driveway. you prolly pull out, come to a complete stop, and turn the wheel completely while putting the car in drive. it slowly wears out your tires and its hard to turn the stearing wheel while doing that.

 

hahahaha! No.
I was pulling into a parking lot not out of one. The other thing too is I have an automatic, so It's in drive all the time...

 

My car did that the first time I bought it. But it needed a major tune up because the engine was running kinda rough and RPM would drop especially if you try to turn w/o accelerating. So I would rev the engine after dropping the gear into neutral as the car coasted a bit while I'm maneuvering. All was resolved after major tune up and 60k service was done.

 

My car runs like a top, thats what had me stunned. Tuneup done about 3 mos. ago and change oil like clock work. Just a freaky one time deal I guess!

 

HAHAHAHAHA! no... hense the reason why i quoted konak85, i was reffering to his problem. if i was answering your question i wouldn't have quoted somebody elses statement. i didnt bother answering yours because your ps belt prolly is slipping, at least to my knowledge, as previously stated by another user

 

my old sentra did that in the cold..I'd wake up..get in, not warm it up, start it up and drive..no power steering for a good 5 minutes..lots of ssscreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeching sounds...but not when driving.. i hated that car...it would stall out in the highway at 85mph...leaving me without steering

 

Never happens to me during warm temperatures, only in cold temps.

 

Yeah it happened to me this morning as i was pulling out of my parking spot. But as soon as I drove about 25 feet the steering was back to normal and it had to have been about 15 degrees this morning.

 

does it make a noise at all when you're trying to turn?

 

I've heard it reffered to as Power Steering "Check" when the PS cuts out on a turn...it happens to me every once in a while in the cold. It's caused by the belt slipping in the cold. The worst it ever happened was when I made a right turn and swung into oncoming traffic because the pump wasn't being driven fast enough, I almost had a head-on with a school bus. That wasn't cool.

Which leads me to the three-year, 60,000 saga of trying to change my power steering belt (still unsucessful). The first belt is so freakin easy with the tensioner....the PS belt is a nightmare. Now I've got to have it done by a garage because I sheared the head off of the adjustment bolt on the PS pump - which is more of an embarrassment than anything else, because I've always been a DIY kind of guy and now I gotta be like "yeah I screwed it up". It has to get done, because that belt has an ungodly amount of miles on it now.

 

That is another indication of a slipping belt. Rubber gets hard in cold weather and loses its grip.