C0074: Requested Driving Torque
What to do
The ordinary brakes are unaffected — what has switched off is the system that catches a skid for you. The car will feel completely normal until the moment it would have intervened, which is exactly when you will not want it missing. Drive gently in the wet and cold and get it diagnosed.
What this code means
The requested driving torque signal has a fault.
These two codes are the two halves of a conversation between the brake module and the engine, and understanding it explains both.
Stability and traction control cannot always fix a slide with brakes alone. When a wheel is spinning because the engine is making more torque than the surface can take, the answer is less torque — so the chassis module requests a reduction and the engine module reports the torque it actually delivered.
Requested is the asking; delivered is the answer. The chassis module compares them: if it asked for a reduction and the engine says it did not comply, the intervention it planned will not happen and it must not rely on it.
Which is why these are usually network faults rather than sensor faults. There is no torque sensor here — the signal is a message on the vehicle bus, so the causes are a module not answering, a bus fault, or an engine control module with its own problems.
Read the engine codes first. An engine already in a reduced-power mode for its own reasons cannot deliver what the chassis asks, and will produce this code as a symptom of something else entirely.
The most important thing first: the car still stops.
ABS, traction control and stability control are all additions to a braking system that works without them. When the module finds a fault it switches itself off and hands back a conventional, fully hydraulic brake system — the pedal, the master cylinder, the lines and the calipers are untouched. You have not lost your brakes.
What you have lost is the help. Without ABS the wheels can lock under hard braking, which lengthens the stopping distance on a slippery surface and — the part people forget — takes away your ability to steer while braking hard, because a locked wheel cannot generate cornering force. Without stability control the car will not catch a slide for you.
So drive it, but drive it as though it were forty years old: brake earlier, leave more room, and be especially careful in rain, snow and on gravel.
Likely causes
Start here
- Loss of communication with another module · specialist
- Corroded or loose connector · specialist
Less common
- Faulty engine control module · specialist
- Faulty stability control module · specialist
- Poor module ground connection · specialist
Symptoms
Components involved
Information, not instruction
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Have anything you intend to act on checked by a trained person against the manufacturer's own procedure for your vehicle. Nothing here replaces that procedure.
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