My daughter just called me. She was driving our 96 automatic and all of a sudden the steering wheel locked up, and the brake light and some of the other dash lights came on (she's not sure which ones). She said the steering wheel felt like it does in Park, but she swears the engine didn't die. She braked and turned it off. When she turned the key back on, it started fine and ran fine. She made it home with no problem, but she says as she was turning it off again, the brake light and the other lights flickered momentarily.

Obviously it sounds like the engine died and killed the power steering, but she says it didn't. And I would expect her to be able to turn the wheel a little without power. I don't remember if the alternator and power steering are on the same belt. If they are, the lights would suggest an alternator issue. Or maybe the car is low on gas, and she was on enough of a hill to run out. But either way it wouldn't have caused a steering problem unless the engine died. It may be that she's just wrong about that. But she's not a dummy, and I'm inclined to believe her.

I'll pull the codes when I get home, but I'm a little afraid there won't be any, since there's no CEL. And if the steering really is locking up, I can't let anyone drive it until I figure out why.

I'll check the belts and gas first. Beyond that, any suggestions as to what I should be looking for?

 

So I got home and questioned my daughter a little more. I'm more inclined now to think it really did stall. No CEL, but there was a P0100 code, which is MAF. It's not really what I'd expect from a bad MAF, but she was going slowly downhill when the engine was cold, and that could have been enough to induce a stall. The belts looked fine, although they might be a little loose, but there was no belt noise. The positive battery terminal is pretty corroded, so it could have just been the power cutting off, but it wasn't loose, so that's lower on my list of suspects. I'll clean the MAF and the terminal this weekend, check the alternator output, and see what happens...

 

bad maf will cuz it to stall chased problems for a whole summer of stallin at lights and random stallin turns out the wire harness to the maf had a short rewired and havent had a issue yet

 

Where was the short, and how did you figure it out?

 

short was right where the wires went into the connector it after a whole summer of lookin for vacume leaks and cleaning the tb and other parts i had the car running while i was under the hood i wiggled the maf wire and the car died that how i found out the problem