My wife's car has this issue, about 50% of the time when starting the engine the PAS light comes on and it goes into 'limp' mode with little steering assistance. 

 

I've logged into the PAS module with VCDS, there's 1 fault code "01317 - Control module in instrument cluster (79-00) please check fault codes".

 

This seems to suggest a fault in the instruments, but logging in there reveals nothing. 

 

I've checked the fluid level, no problem there. 

 

Car has 200,000 miles under its belt.

 

Has anyone ever encountered this before?

 

Thanks, Dave.

More than likely a can bus issue with the cluster. More than likely a wiring issue under the battery area. I'd check the can bus network (adv measuring blocks in 19 Gateway) and see if it's seeing the PAS pump.

Thanks for the pretty much instant response

 

Ok, I know how to check the measurement blocks, what will I be looking for? Is there an error/instance counter or something?

 

I presume the wiring here is a common failure, is there a particular plug or does the wiring rub through or something else?

 

Thanks, Dave.

You should be able to find the comm status. Normally be a 1 or 0 to show the module is on the network. Or a simple wiring check from the green plug on the back of the cluster to the plug on the pump. Can wiring is orange/green and orange/brown normally.

Checked over all the wiring under the battery and visually inspected the connection on the pump etc, could not see anything untoward.

 

Checked the gateway and could not find the pump listed anywhere with it's connection status.

 

What I did notice was that the battery voltage was dropping off very fast, baring in mind that the car was still on it's original 13 year old battery I figured that it could be contributing to the failure. After replacement I couldn't get it to fault again but the nature of this fault is that it's quite random (although it was doing it more and more recently).

 

Will report back if it doesn't solve the issue. 

 

Dave.