Jk3110

My JK 2015 was parked for 2-3 weeks and today afternoon i have decided to take it for a ride. Soon as i have started driving the car, the steering felt abnormal and it required additional effort to rotate the steering. The feel was like driving the car with deflated front tires. I drove the car for a while hoping things might improve but nothing has changed. During the drive I have noticed that the steering control buttons, horn were not working with the exception of the cruise control buttons.

I did a quick search in the forum and i have figured out that a bad clock spring causes the steering control buttons not to work however, i could not find anything on hard steering feeling that could be caused by bad clock spring or it could be just a considence where other steering component gone bad along with the clock spring.

So far, i have checked the tire pressure and they had 32 psi in them. I have tried disconnecting the battery for a while hoping that it would resolve some of the above stated issues but without any luck.

My question is, does the bad clock spring is causing the hard steering feel? If not, what are the other possibilities that is causing the steering to feel hard?

resharp001

No, the clockspring will have zero effect on the effort required to turn the steering wheel. That clockspring is really just a flat ribbon cable that is wrapped in a spiral and encased in a plastic housing that facilitates electrical connections to the controls on the steering wheel while the steering wheel rotates around the clock during turns. It's not adding any resistance at all.

First thing I might do is remove the steering stabilizer and see if that changes anything. That would at least eliminate that from the equation. If things are still the same, and assuming you don't see anything binding mechanically in the steering linkage, I might wonder if the PS pump is on it's way out and maybe not transferring fluid at the rate it should (or some sort of line blockage preventing the fluid exchange).