Thread: car loses power when turning left

First off a little info on the car. Its a 96 that i am doing a VE+T swap in. I have a bulk of the work done, however a small problem has arose. I had the car running at one point just to make sure all was good before I finished. I came back to it about 3 weeks later, and the car would not run. I found that it will start up and run if the steering wheel is pulled to the right. As soon as the wheel is pulled to the left, it cuts the power to the computer. Once the pressure is off the wheel, power comes back. The only thing I did in between running and not running is wire up some fans, which I have hard wired on a toggle switch. I have ripped the column apart to find some sort of short and retraced every wire I can think of, checked all fuses, relays, grounds, but still nothing. Desperate for help on this one. Please let me know if any more info will help.

Thanks,
Dan

does it stay running when you give it a little gas? u sure the power to the computer is gone when the wheel is turned, might be something with the idle, your computer kicks the idle up when the wheel is turned to make up for the extra load of the pump. maybe its just idling it up enough to run when you turn the wheel

The power is definitely gone. With the key in the run position and car not running, when the wheel is pulled left, the computer shuts off and then when pulled to the right the computer clicks back on and the fuel pump runs.

well im sure you have access to wiring a diagram? if not i can get one from work, im pretty sure from hooking up my remote start we have 3 hotwires coming off our ign switch, you sure you checked them all? i would get the wheel where it gets power to computer and just start wiggling wires around. ive seen weird stuff like this before, one guy only blew a fuse when he got in the car it took a test drive with him to figure it out, he was 300 plus pounds and had to move the wheel all the way up and a loose wire was hitting when he did it and popped the fuse. check really good around where the column goes thru the firewall.

I have checked every plug and pulled and rattled every wire I can find under the column. Slight update, today i jacked up the front end of the car, and with the front wheels off the ground, it does not matter where you turn the wheel it will not get any power. But once the car is back on the ground, it will get power when the wheel is pulled to the right. Any ideas?

id check under the hood then, possibly anywhere around the rack and up under the splash shield on the driver side. pretty sure the other part of the main harness runs under there. you dont have giant tires do you? could have rubbed thru it

Last time the car was actually driven was about 2 years ago and never had anything but stock wheels on it. I did not have this problem until a couple weeks ago and it came out of nowhere. Like I said, I started it up to make sure things worked like they should, and they did. I let the car sit a couple weeks after that, and then the problem mysterious appeared. The ONLY 2 things that changed were wiring up some cooling fans and filled it up with coolant. I cant imagine either of these could cause an issue like this.

rodents cause all kinds of problems. maybe one chewed up some wires somewhere. sorry i cant be of more help

That was my first thought and thats when i ripped the column apart and tore through everything under the dash and under the hood. Thanks for the help though.

exorcism?