Golf electric power steering vs Wombat

**logger** · 20-07-2011, 10:41 PM

Collected a wombat at ~ 100kph last Fri night. Smashed the front left plastic bumper, impacted the LH front wheel and took out the lower engine cover. Bent the horn bracket and that's about it visually. Pulled up nice and straight with TCS, Electronic steering & TMPS warning lights all on. (Nice to know my TMPS mod works in anger). Fortunately no obvious damage to headlight or the metal body work. Poor blighter left some of his coat wedged between the tyre and rim of the rear left tyre on exit.

Had a quick look to ensure car was still driveable and limped the 10 kms home in the dark after defouling the lower engine cover which was dragging on the road. The TCS and Steering lights cleared within a couple of minutes and the TMPS light cleared a bit later.

Car was fine to drive, however the steering alignment was unsurprisingly out, with it pulling to the left & me having to hold the steering wheel offset 2" to the right to drive straight. If I let go of the wheel the car would veer off the road.
Pulled the VCDS messages and the main one was a momentary impluasible steering angle of -19 degrees! You get that when you hit a wombat at 100kph I guess.

What is really neat is how the Electronic power steering subsequntly worked. Over the weekend I used the car sparingly driving only a few kms at low speed on country roads. During this period the steering was as I decribed above - in that I had to hold in a right hand force to track straight.

At the end of the weekend I set off the 200km back to MELB. Within about 10 minutes of driving at highway speeds on
sealed roads the electronic power steering adapted to the alignment error and allowed the car to track dead straight again with hands off the wheel and no lateral trim force required by me. Albeit with the wheel still offset 2" to the right as had been the case all weekend. This is how the erwin self study guides describes the electronic steering sytem works with crosswinds - clever stuff. Obviously if I was to keep driving the car indefinitely in this bent configuration it will scrub the tyres out. I explained this adaptive system to my local VW service dept last year when I had an alignment issue and they had no idea this was how it worked! The point to note here is that the system can trim out lateral errors by using the yaw sensors and mask bad steering alignment.

Anyway, car is getting mended now. Hopefully they can realign the steering and nothing more serious is bent in the front end. Could have been a lot worse.

**Corey_R** · 20-07-2011, 10:49 PM

Sorry to hear about the damage! Good thing you are safe and the car is relatively unharmed.
It's great to hear you are able to talk about the positives of the VW technological wonders after an incident such as this. The power steering is really cool

**AdamD** · 21-07-2011, 12:09 AM

Originally Posted by logger

Anyway, car is getting mended now. Hopefully they can realign the steering and nothing more serious is bent in the front end. Could have been a lot worse.

Good to hear things are being mended and the incident didn't end up too serious. Fingers crossed the repair bill isn't too scary either!

**triode12** · 21-07-2011, 08:51 AM

I hope you made sure the Wombat was dead and not left to suffer a slow painful death when you left the scene.

**logger** · 21-07-2011, 08:58 AM

I will only have to cover the $500 excess. If if the steering can be realigned I am thinking it will probably be under $2k. OTOH if bits are bent in there that require a rebuild it wont be cheap for the insurance company. Visually the suspension all looks fine. Wont post pictures of the wombat - he was dead in an instant!

**Glennb** · 21-07-2011, 10:11 AM

Originally Posted by triode12

I hope you made sure the Wombat was dead and not left to suffer a slow painful death when you left the scene.

Whilst i don't like to see animals suffer, trying to kill a wombat on the side of the road would be quite a job!
Unless you carry a .22 rifle in the boot with you?

**Andych** · 21-07-2011, 12:42 PM

Originally Posted by Glennb

Whilst i don't like to see animals suffer, trying to kill a wombat on the side of the road would be quite a job!
Unless you carry a .22 rifle in the boot with you?

Apparently a MkVI Golf 118 at 100kph is a relatively good substitute for a .22 Rifle.

**logger** · 31-07-2011, 12:48 PM

Car is almost fully repaired now. New bumper, radiator support and a lot of black plastic bits associated with the left hand mudguard. Repairer is chasing up a couple of missing parts.

This is looking forward LH front wheel.

What part am I missing here? My guess is the oval hole which was never there before, is an access panel for the driving light which is not fitted to my car. This being the case am I correct in assuming there should be a cover to click into place to keep the mud out. Anyway repairer knows something is missing here and is chasing it up. I thought I'd ask here as no doubt someone will know.

Wonder if this slightly different mudguard part (with access hole) is a new improved part or just a case of one part fits all to save inventory.