24 off road 25kmi - Voltage Abnormality Steering Power Low Visit Your Dealer

[emerica243]

4 tacoma off road 25k miles - Just had this happen this morning after about 10 minutes into my drive. "Voltage Abnormality Steering Power Low Visit Your Dealer" It was present for about 10-15 seconds before it disappeared. I used my carvista obd2 tool to pull current codes from the vehicle, but nothing was there.
From a quick search in general it seems like a bad or low starter battery can cause this, which makes sense.

However I dont see that to be the case since my battery is only a year old and i have a bluetooth based battery monitor hooked up to my starter battery(been like that for 2 years), in which i checked the historical data of the starter battery from 12 hours prior to when i started the vehicle up to the point the error was thrown. And it was at 12.6v throughout the night, as expected. And then jumped to 13.7v with the vehicle started as i headed out in the morning. Which tells me the starter battery itsself was not low, nor is there an alternator or charging issue. So a vehicle wide low voltage issue shouldnt be the case.

Which makes me think it was either a one off electrical glitch or theres something more about to happen like a bad connection, corrosion or a connector or some sort of module issue that controls the power steering that could be indicative of a measured low voltage at that module if not something else. Anyway, if anyone has any other thoughts of what to look at or anything id appreciate it. Im waiting to see if its going to happen again before i stop by the dealer.

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[Sagebrush]

Six-bits says it ends up being your battery. I, too, would be looking at the voltages, but as you know, that's just the surface charge or some such magic.

Take it to a parts house and have them test it on their box.

 

[Sner]

Take that garbage aftermarket Bluetooth battery monitor off the truck and stop relying on it. It just may be your problem period. It’ll be the first thing the dealer tells you before they even think about covering a battery.

 

[rijc99]

Isn’t that Bluetooth module a constant draw on your battery?

 

[emerica243]

Take that garbage aftermarket Bluetooth battery monitor off the truck and stop relying on it. It just may be your problem period. It’ll be the first thing the dealer tells you before they even think about covering a battery.

Apologies for the delayed reply to your comment, though its lack of technical merit made it far from urgent. Your response demonstrated minimal thought and contributed nothing of value, so I’ll keep this brief to avoid not further wasting my time.

For the record, the idle draw on my Bluetooth battery monitor is below 1.5 mA. Your claim that this has any meaningful effect on a vehicle already drawing around 50 mA from factory modules shows you’re unfamiliar with how ultra‑low‑power BLE microcontrollers actually work. The idea that such a device contributes anything measurable to this equation is laughable.

And no — the dealership won’t be asking me to remove anything. They don’t own this battery. For anyone else reading: I haven’t seen the alert again in over two weeks. That’s a textbook electrical gremlin. CAN systems can be finicky, and something as simple as a slightly mis‑seated fuse can cause intermittent behavior like this.

 

[emerica243]

Isn’t that Bluetooth module a constant draw on your battery?

Not unless theres an electrical problem like a short or such. These devices have non-existant idle current draws when attached to batteries of expectant capacities

 

[Sner]

Isn’t that Bluetooth module a constant draw on your battery?

Exactly! @emerica243 this demonstrated your naïvety. How do you think the thing is powered ?

 

[Sner]

Apologies for the delayed reply to your comment, though its lack of technical merit made it far from urgent. Your response demonstrated minimal thought and contributed nothing of value, so I’ll keep this brief to avoid not further wasting my time.

For the record, the idle draw on my Bluetooth battery monitor is below 1.5 mA. Your claim that this has any meaningful effect on a vehicle already drawing around 50 mA from factory modules shows you’re unfamiliar with how ultra‑low‑power BLE microcontrollers actually work. The idea that such a device contributes anything measurable to this equation is laughable.

And no — the dealership won’t be asking me to remove anything. They don’t own this battery. For anyone else reading: I haven’t seen the alert again in over two weeks. That’s a textbook electrical gremlin. CAN systems can be finicky, and something as simple as a slightly mis‑seated fuse can cause intermittent behavior like this.

Bravo ! Excellent performance- BRAVO!

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