Towing a Jeep Cherokee Overland

[travelite]

That's a good writeup Chuck. Maybe to lessen the pain ever so slightly you might install one of these fuse bypass switches: https://www.etrailer.com/question-51883.html. At least this way you don't need to constantly open the hood to remove and replace the fuse. You may have to lengthen it a little depending upon where your fuse box is located.

I'm afraid electronic power assist steering is here to stay. It's hard to find a new passenger car that doesn't employ EPAS. The advantages are too many, and they've proven to be relatively reliable. There's a story or two out there of early failure with unintended steering but not many. The system in my Flex appears to be the Fail-Operational type, which means in the event of failure it falls back on mechanical steering. There are problems with this because I don't think most owners fully appreciate the amount of steering input required to steer a non-power assist car and they may think they have no steering. (The driver may even have to manually unwind the steering in slow corners). It'd be much better to have a fully redundant system with multiple motors, controllers, sensors, and a voting mechanism. Aircraft probably use this sort of system, but no way are penny pinching car companies going to. Given a choice, I'd opt for the old hydraulics!

I don't know if my Flex EPAS is always powered, but I know my battery runs down very rapidly. It tows beautifully, probably better then any of my other toads.

Good luck, I hope you have success with the new setup.