steering lock up

Hopefully you weren't hurt in this incident.

When you say "lock up", do you mean that the steering wheel "locked up" as in "couldn't turn", or the power assist failed, making the steering wheel very difficult (and maybe impossible, for someone with limited upper body strength) to turn? Those are two very decidedly different failure modes.

No, I've not had either happen, although I'm still intrigued as to what the failure modes for the electrically-assisted power steering on my Ion might be. The common catastrophic failure mode for hydraulically assisted power steering is well known--drive belt snaps, presto, no more power assist, it takes a lot more effort to steer but you can do it.

I've managed to experience what happens when the fuse comes loose. I hit a nasty bit of washboard and the next time I started the car, there wasn't enough of a connection for the system to come on line...easy enough fix in my case...pop open the fues box and remove then reinstall the fuse...next time I turned the key, all was fine and dandy.

Michael

During a trip I bumped the key and it turned the car off. I didn't think this was possible while the car was in motion, but the car turned off. This shut down the power steering and with the road noise it was difficult to tell that the car was off. I put it into neutral and started it back up and continued on my way.

Andy