Rav4 P0500 Fault Lights (Vehicle Speed Sensor)

[barkerboy]

Our 2006 Rav4 T180 seems to be developing a fault!

Last week over 2 days when pulling away from a stand the car steering locked up and started veering off. Now on the 3rd time i managed to turn the steering with force and noticed the orange LOCK light illuminated on the dash. This is quite a worrying thing as although i was only pulling away at slow speed (5-6mph) i could have veered into a car if there had been one parked there.

I guessed it could be the car reading some kind of wheel spin in the wet conditions and it went into a safe stop mode.

Then 2 days ago the wife was driving the car normally from A to B and she had multiple warning lights on the dash. She parked outside school, picked the children up and then had trouble starting (took a couple of attempts). She drove the car home and I set to it with my diagnostcs reader...

P0500 fault code with dash warning lights saying Check VSC and 4 x 4 system. The 0500 fault i've found out is Vehicle Speed Sensor and the previous entries on here show a loss of speedo functionaltity but to the best of my knowldege we havn't had this. I deleted the code, started the car (started 2nd time) and went for a 20 minute spin and so far the fault hasn't come back.

I'll be keeping this post up to date if it re-occurs and i suspect it will. If anyone has experience or advise that would be appreciated.

[anchorman]

I would say the speed sensor is most likely at fault;

0500.pdf