Driver Ryan Millen and co-driver Christina Fate had taken an alternate RAV4 to Gorman Ridge to test out, according to Rallynotes. This car was originally intended for showroom displays, but instead of faking it, Toyota just built another race car. Given that the only big changes were adding safety items, tweaking the suspension and swapping tires, that wasn’t hard to do.
After completing four stages in the RAV4, it wouldn’t start back up. The RAV4 got stuck in the rally’s service park because its theft deterrent system thought the car was being stolen and disabled the car accordingly.
It likely detected that the steering column had been tampered with in the process of removing the airbags and steering column lock to prepare it for racing, Rallynotes noted. Switches and sensors are so integrated into the car now that it’s become impossible just to swap an ECU out to disable theft deterrents and other systems.
No comments:
Post a Comment