Steering Wheel Locked and Engine Shut Down While Accelerating onto Freeway!

LnLsProudMom

Yesterday morning while driving into work, as I accelerated onto the freeway, the steering wheel locked and the engine shut down at exactly the same time, leaving me no control (although the electricity to run the radio, lights, etc., stayed on). I luckily was angled toward the left shoulder, so was able to safely coast to the side. I was SO lucky I wasn't actually on the freeway. Once I stopped, I was able to restart the engine and drive. I got it into my dealership by 8:30am, but no one has even looked at it yet (24 hours later)!

I see that other people have had similar problems, but it looks like it was on older models. Does anyone know what the latest solution to the problem is?

Strangely, I had a similar problem happen on my older, 2007 GMC Acadia when it had 80,000 miles on it. But the car wouldn't restart, the timing chain had broken, and the engine had to be replaced. THAT was a huge fiasco! GMC didn't take any responsibility at the time, I had to pay for the whole thing, and then coincidentally I found out later that the part had been recalled!! No one ever reached out to me to tell me--I had to contact GM and I EVENTUALLY was reimbursed for my new engine expenses.

I'm thinking it's time to avoid all GM products in the future...

Mr_Shiftright

Your steering wheel probably didn't 'lock'--but when the engine stalls you do lose the power steering in most cars--so it becomes very hard to steer.

If this is an intermittent problem that goes away when you restart the van, then it might take time to track it down--if the dealer can't get it to stall while they have diagnostics hooked up to it. So you might have to prepare yourself for multiple trips. It's hard to fix something that disappears. It's probably some kind of electronics ghost. Hopefully, a stored code might give a clue.