ESP light and steering angle sensor - recalibration?

Hi all, many years since last posting here.
Due to house moves, international travel and motorbikes, my track/hillclimb project fell by the wayside for a while until earlier this year.
I quit my job in the summer and seen to have spent almost all of my spare time working on all of our various vehicles, including almost completely finishing the Clio.
With almost everything sorted, I booked my MOT for this Friday since I thought I'd gave time to get virtually everything back together.

I've fixed essentially everything, including buying an old Renault steering wheel under the advisement that the aftermarket OMP one would fail MOT due to airbag obviously missing.

Now the only issue I have is ESP light related.
When the ignition is turned on, the usual start up sequence goes through and the ABS and ESP lights start on for a fraction longer than others, but ultimately all go out. All is well, including starting engine, but as soon as the steering wheel is turned, the ESP light comes on.
I assumed I'd messed up the clock spring and/or steering angle sensor, but I pulled them apart and reset them, with the squib set to zero, ribbon at the top and yellow indicator showing. Reassembled everything and still does the same.

Am I missing something?

I've read numerous threads on here but nothing seems to offer a solution.
Car is not MOTd or insured, so can't be driven unless to a repair, but I'd want to be damn sure I'm having the right thing repaired if I book it in somewhere. Five months of no work and I've burnt through an alarming amount of savings.

My only current thought is a comment on one of the threads about signal incoherence from the steering angle sensor and power steering fluid pressure sensor. I removed my PAS pump and pipes, along with the air con, plugged the ports in the column and bridged the two on the rack.
The impression I had was that removing the PAS would not cause any issues with anything else - was I mistaken?

Would love it if anyone had any advice on other things to check.

Get it scanned with can clip to see whats triggering the lights.

In an ideal world, this would be the first step of course.
The only local place I know of with CLIP charges £180 for initial diagnostics and after the one time I used them previously on another car, I have very little faith in them.
The other problem is that the car is not MOT'd so can only be driven to an MOT or repair and I don't think diagnostics would be included in the remit of repairs?

If there were anyone else in the Telford area with CLIP, particularly anyone mobile, that would be excellent, but I'm very unhappy with the idea of paying £180 to run one program.

Was mostly wondering if there are any other major causes I can investigate myself (possibly related to PAS) without having to resort to having it recovered at £40 cost to a garage.
I could take it for it's MOT knowing it'll fail and hope they diagnose the issue at the time, but assume they won't find the root cause in the course of the MOT and will want to do more diagnostics work after, which soon adds up.

Another question; would the car need to be driven with all four wheels on the ground to reset properly? It's currently up on front axle stands while I've been replacing the cat and lambdas, so while it's un-MOT'd I can "drive" it with the front wheels turning under power and lock to lock on the steering, but I wonder if this wouldn't really work unless the rear sensors detect them also turning at the same speed.
In short, I don't know what I don't know.
Just spitballing.
If it were taxed and tested this would all be a different story, but my options are somewhat limited by the legality of driving it anywhere.

It really needs to be plugged into clip, anything else is just guessing.

I was the same, going round the whole system, changing abs sensors, modules, brake switches etc. But until I bought a clone clip and old laptop I was just chasing shadows. I even took it to a “specialist” who charged me £300 to have it 3 months and not fix the fault.

Turns out it was my steering angle sensor, managed to recalibrate using clip and this sorted the issue. See old thread on this subject below:

But I like blind guesswork...

Looks like plugging it in is the way to go then. CLIP itself looks like a pain to use, but I take it from your comments on that thread that iCarsoft is a non-starter, although that was five years ago, so I might check if the new version is more capable. I'd prefer to have one small thing to plug in rather than carting an old junk laptop around. Extra functionality of CLIP is enticing though.
Shame there doesn't appear to be anyone local with it.

Thanks very much guys, will consider software options

Even though it was 5 years ago, my guess is that it will be the same situation. I doubt they’ve improved their software to now help fix 20 year old cars…

From what I remember iCarsoft support was a complete nightmare to get an answer from. I waited 10 months to get the following reply:



But like you say that may have improved…

I've got a steering angle sensor if you fancy firing the parts cannon at it.

dr54pvw said:

Even though it was 5 years ago, my guess is that it will be the same situation. I doubt they’ve improved their software to now help fix 20 year old cars…

From what I remember iCarsoft support was a complete nightmare to get an answer from. I waited 10 months to get the following reply:



But like you say that may have improved…

Click to expand...

I think you're probably right. Seems like it's a good next step up from a simple OBD scanner, but still a step down from CLIP.

I went to Severn Valley Motorsport today to chat with them about CLIP and the MOT (which they're performing) and they do not have CLIP, but are confident they can probably reset the steering angle sensor with their more generic software.

How realistic do we think this is?
Is there much precedent for these being reset with non-CLIP software or is this optimistic on their part?

If the general opinion is that they won't be able to and that the car is drivable with the fault (not in limp mode etc) I might just pull the dash apart and tape over the light between the halves of the instrument panel.

It's in for a test at 11am on Friday but I'll drive over on Thursday for a mini test drive.

hopgop1 said:

I've got a steering angle sensor if you fancy firing the parts cannon at it.

Click to expand...

Dibs on this please. I know I shouldn't do this but firing the parts canon at it has so far yielded very promising results.

Codfather said:

I think you're probably right. Seems like it's a good next step up from a simple OBD scanner, but still a step down from CLIP.

I went to Severn Valley Motorsport today to chat with them about CLIP and the MOT (which they're performing) and they do not have CLIP, but are confident they can probably reset the steering angle sensor with their more generic software.

How realistic do we think this is?
Is there much precedent for these being reset with non-CLIP software or is this optimistic on their part?

If the general opinion is that they won't be able to and that the car is drivable with the fault (not in limp mode etc) I might just pull the dash apart and tape over the light between the halves of the instrument panel.

It's in for a test at 11am on Friday but I'll drive over on Thursday for a mini test drive.



Dibs on this please. I know I shouldn't do this but firing the parts canon at it has so far yielded very promising results.

Click to expand...

Double check yours has the same part number as mine, 8200058692, if so and you're interested, drop me a PM.