Toyota 3.4L TT recall

Just look at their legion of fanboys online trying to gas light everyone with moving goal posts on internet forums and reddit

It starts with:

"it's a rumor, nothing more"

When that doesn't seem like the case:

"it's one or two and the rest just people repeating them on the internet"

that turns into

"so it's more than a few, so what, people without problems don't go to forums to complain so the failures are amplified online."

when that turns out to be too optimistic

"well it's a mass produced product so it's bound to have problems. I don't have one but I would have no issue buying one. Besides, Toyota is not recalling anything so it's fine."

When the recall is issued. that's followed by:

"It's a small percentage. Besides, Toyota is stand up and is actively taking care of customers much better than GM/Ford/Stellatis/etc. Toyota knows what they are doing so they got this sorted out, it's only American built units so it was a localized manufacturing error."

When the recall is expanded further to current year models including Japan built units, they will say something like

"I know a guy who knows a guy with 50k so clearly it's overblown. Toyota Strong!"



The whole time, they are driving 5th gen 4runners or something.

 

That's the perk of being Toyota, at least for now, they have no shortage of buyers so they have no incentive to admit anything. You don't want one? No problem, some "first time Toyota Fam member here" eager beaver will be happy to sign up for a 6 year loan on a 70k-90k TRD PRO and be happy he only paid 10k over MSRP after waiting in line for a year.

 

Hahaha. That’s perfect.

 

Imagine how much money will end up tied up into some of these trucks. There are already some that are on their third engine. Will there be a limit to how many engine replacements an individual truck can have?

 

There are some people on the Tundra forums that have been doing all sorts of adding and subtracting, and it would appear the "average" cost TO toyota is about $22,000 per vehicle. This is the cost of the engine, labor, loaner. BUT some of the vehicles that were not under the recall that dont get a full complete engine to swap in get a short block and the dealer tech has to build it. Those almost always end up like this story, its a sad story. These sort of vehicle builds are normally 40+ days and almost every one sounds like it ends the same way. Read thru this one if you get a chance, and try to extrapolate the cost to Toyota. There is no way the dealership didnt eat 80-100 hours of labor on this one vehicle and when the engine is being swapped in or out it takes 4-5 people at the same time to guide things in. Toyota has to be getting hosed on all of this.

https://www.tundras.com/threads/the-terrabl-build-thread-25-limited-crewmax.160465/

 

The way they’re doing this they can’t be getting hosed that bad… yet.

They must’ve figured it’s cheaper to keep knowingly selling trucks with defective engines, replacing engines with more defective engines, and dragging their name through the mud in the process.

Someone had to have done the math and figured out this way is the cheapest - even with the damage done to the brand.

We also don’t know the extent the damage has been done to the brand, I’d wager most of this damage is still limited to the online world. They might be hedging their bets this sticks mostly to the internet and that people will still buy on the old “Toyota is reliable” moniker. By the time this is resolved, if it ever gets resolved (hopefully), it may just start getting out that Toyota has handled this terribly. To the non internet public now, they just may hear “wow another engine recall, but at least they’re replacing the whole engine” and not think of the whole back story that goes with it.

 

The dealers have no choice but to eat the cost if they want any more Rav4/Highlander hybrid or Sienna allocations next year.

 

I’ve only read some of that thread so far but wow what a nightmare. Also is it a requirement to be a pathological liar to work at a dealership?

 

Yep, its all about the allocation sheets and profit margins. The Rav4 is outselling everything else combined so they gotta do whatever it takes to keep the car haulers rolling in, even if it means taking 3-5 unsellable trucks per month.

Hard to say, i read that thread every day for updates, he is not the only one that has went thru a story like that. Almost all of the short block rebuild stories read like that but his was the most well documented day by day as he updated the post almost daily. I dont take any of my Toyotas to my local dealer for anything and i mean anything. They have botched nearly everything they have touched of mine in the past so i take my business elsewhere. I took my 2008 Tacoma in for an oil change on a Tuesday morning before a trip out of town. Tech drained the oil, changed the filter, tightened everything up and pulled it around for me to pick up. I paid and left and got 6 miles up the road and the engine sounded like the green Eclipse in Fast and Furious. No joke made that same sort of weird loss of power, decelerating metal sound, followed by a clack'ity clack clank and then locked the back tires up. I bumped it into neutral and rolled to the side of the road to find my crank broke and rods windowed the block and oil pan with only a little black oil on the ground. Tech forgot to put oil back in the engine. I kept on cautiously after that and let them service vehicles while inside warranty period. My wifes 2012 got an oil change before she went out of town and they broke the plastic oil cap and didnt say anything. She drove it home and when i walked outside we had a huge puddle of oil in the carport. Dealer did an alignment on my 2008 and left the left front lower A-arm eccentrics and bolts loose and the front end slowly fell and got out of alignment. I quit going to the dealer around 2014 because of the lack of trust. The tech that botched my oil change in 2009 still works at the local dealer today as a main mechanic, not an oil change bay guy. There are horror stories from other brands and dealers and techs. These toyotas are easy to work on, can you imagine pulling the whole cab off a truck just to do any sort of work on it? Some of these other brands have to be split in half to do anything to them. Thats so nuts.

 

I like to think the people at the dealership are just all very overwhelmed and not intentionally out to screw people.

That being said, Toyota dealerships tend to be either great, or have pathological god complex staff who think they can part the Red Sea because they have people begging them for in-demand models. That's a status exclusive to Toyota among mass market brand dealerships outside of that brief period between 2021 and 2023.

 

I can’t believe that the story ends with him trading that truck in for someone else to buy. Toyota should have taken that truck to the crusher.

 

glad you made it to the end
Crazy the dealer who was working on it was gonna hose him down with a -$18,000 loss on trade in

 

This is the most surprising part to me. Historically, Toyota was famous for stopping production whenever a systemic defect was found, so they didn't have bad products going out the door.

Having the slow recall expansion to later model years after the original issue was found is pretty damning. If Toyota isn't following Toyota Production Systems (TPS), what the hell are they doing? And what are we paying a premium for?

They've never had the best design for anything (Honda is the better motor designer), but the consistent production process was their bread and butter.

 

True. Toyota is nothing without their reliability.

 

the answer to your question is YES!

 

Their reliability came from keeping more mature designs in production longer than most competitors.

That practice leads to less than rigorous research, development and testing if the management is complacent with their reputation and profit margin in the near term.

 

That thread was crazy. Poor dude.

 

There is a story on thedrive.com today on an example of a 2024 LC250 that has over 110k miles being used as an exclusively on road courier vehicle, and people in the comments are all marveling at how reliable it is.

I guess the bar is in the eyes of the beholder.

 

Covid manufacturing and quality issues have reverted us back to 1980’s quality and expectations.

 

Everyone at that dealership should be fired.

 

Actual defects with the recalled population is around 1%. Outside the forums and fringe Youtube channels, the Tundra owners aren't bothered with something that has a 1% chance of happening.

Basically this

 

A few hundred thousand people aren’t bothered by needing to get their engine replaced by the morons working at the dealerships? Ya OK bud.

 

^The increasing sales suggests people aren't bothered. Dealers have been doing routine engine-out jobs for the past couple of decades on 5.7L cam tower leaks and 3.5L cam phaser rattles and timing cover leaks (affecting everything from Camrys to RAV4s to ES350s and RX350s).

Also consider the millions of 4Runner owners who trust to get all their maintenance and repairs done at dealers. Don't have to look far, here's a 5th gen owner who took his 9 year-old vehicle with 159k miles (i.e. well past powertrain warranty) to a dealer for transmission failure: https://www.4runners.com/threads/transmission-failure-replace-5th-gen.34559/

 

They can't even change oil properly. I'd like to think the tech changing my entire ECU forward engine harness did a good job...gulp.

 

Don't forget how well Hyundai's and Kia's sell after a decade of engine issues that dwarfed the 3.4 and 6.2, the no immobilizer + plastic ignition lock cylinder mount leading to wanton theft and insurance spikes, the zillion different causes of fire ranging from leaks, shorts, setting fan speed to 3, etc.

Folks have been saying "they sucked before but they're good now!"* practically every year since the 2011 Sonata dropped.

*(Me included many years ago)

Heck, you can find fans on Kia forums that espouse the importance of maintenance and that the issues are overblown by the internet and -- oops their engine is knocking or guzzled a quart of oil.

I still see 2010's Hyundai and Kia's on the side of the highway or on Craigslist with a "new engine!" even today.

Still breaking sales records.

 

A friend of mine was considering 3-row KIA SUV. I told him about engine fires, etc. even if that specific vehicle was not at the time known to be affected. Well, it is now.

 

The increase in sales is more likely because the prices and interest rates have dropped in order to attract uninformed buyers.

 

Also, it is possible the "1%" our resident 6th gen expert references was at least partially due to Toyota not knowing the exact percentage so they put down "1" as a place holder value, so the whole "1% failure rate" is misquoting of an unknown value place holder. LOL.

The 127k figure only covers gas-only vehicles produced up to Apr 2024, so it might go up since hybrids and 2025s are known to fail as well.

 

To top-post, Toyota dropping the V8 option exacerbates the turbo V6 controversy. Pay the CAFE penalties and offer a 400+ hp V8, it likely would've been cheaper overall without the PR nightmare.

 

I wish... Even my 5th Gen would love a 5.7L Tundra engine...
Oh well.