Blue2U said:

My car is the 1.3 diesel automatic Trekking.

I was at the bottom of an incline waiting to turn right (perhaps 45seconds,) as I pulled out I felt a slight "clunk", I then realised I had NO power steering, as I was on a busy road I wrestled the Trekk up to the next side road (about a minute) and pulled over, by this time the red battery warning light had come on.
I switched the engine off, opened the bonnet and checked if anything looked out of place, nothing, all looked good and no smells.
Switched on, everything fine, power steering working, a few minutes later the stop-start disconnected and the warning light came on.
I got to my destination, switched off, left the car for about an hour, when I got back everything was fine, stop-start and PAS working, no warning lights. We stopped at another destination for about an hour and again drove home with everything working normally.

The Trekking is heavy with no PAS. If my wife or daughters had been driving I'm sure the power steering failure could have led to them hitting cars parked opposite the junction.

Earlier in the day we had done a 90km each way highway journey to the coast and did a few kilometres down some rough gravel roads, I had the cruise control at 120kmh on the highway for both legs and the Trekk was faultless.

I'm taking the Trekk in to the workshop first thing tomorrow morning (Monday) but was wondering if anybody here has had anything similar?

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JTD_Liam said:

If you'd only had power steering failure I'd have been concerned it was a dodgy steering motor - not sure if 500L uses the same but the one in Panda's, 500's & Punto's is a Delphi unit and does have its weaknesses, usually with age and getting rarer these days though.

However, because it was a couple of electrical gremlins I would suggest the battery might not be holding charge or charging properly - this will trigger 'failure' warnings on most Fiats & Alfas. A few 500L's including What Car?s long-term 500L have needed batteries replacing very early, so I'd suggest that's the problem. A dealer should be able to test and replace under warranty.

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Blue2U said:

Cheers, the battery crossed my mind initially, but as we'd just done a long run I dismissed it, if they are clueless I'll mention the What Car? issue to them.

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MJG said:

There have been reports (all be it a very small number) of 500L battery failures on here.

Manifesting itself as going flat after leaving the vehicle standing unused for a few days.

Keep us posted.....

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