My 2012 nightmare

Hi all,

I wanted to share what I have been dealing with at my local dealership as of recent.

Context:
The truck. 2012 Tacoma Regular Cab 2.7 five speed 4x4
the " mods"
ARE MX topper with racks
stock size Hankook Danapro ATM's 10 ply Bought after blowing out two of the dungflops after only 5000 miles, both in one week
Current miles 17,500

I bought this truck brand new in july of last year with only a few miles on the clock. The truck replaced a 2012 Subaru that just was not cutting it in terms of room, clearance, towing power, and ability.
I was pretty pissey with the tires that came with the truck but there was nothing that I could do about it. Even more pissed when I had to replace them only two months into owning the truck.

Needless to say after that I went from Aug of last year to about febuary of this year, LOVING my truck, loving the fact that Toyota took care of all the service for the first 25 k miles over all very pleased with my purchase, and more then willing to fork over my truck payment every month

And then, my ordeal started.

At the start of Feb, I had my truck in for its fifteen thousand mile service. That inculded a tire rotation. The second I got back in my truck and drove it away, I noticed that at highway speed I had a nice wobble/ viberation going on. At this point I was well away from the dealer and knew that there was nothing that they could do that day anyways.

So I took it home and ingored it for a few days. I told my self, its still the dead of winter, perhaps there is a bunch of mud/ ice packed in the wheels, that is what it felt like. There was, I do after all live in north idaho up a muddy dirt/ rock/ snow mountain road.

so a few days later I took it to a bay and pressured washed the hell out of it. that helped, but the problem did not go away.

Needless to say I had to do something. But I did not want to go to the dealership.
Parker Toyota, in Coeur D' Alene Idaho is a 130 mile round trip from my house, it is the closest dealership and thus service center and warrenty center for me.
I figured, it will cost me that in gas to get there and back to I took it to a local shop and had them balance the tires.

Didnt fix a thing ...
Damn, So I called up the Dealership the next day and let them know what was going on and booked an Appt, they didn't have anything for almost a week.

I went down having done extensive research on what it could be.
I spent three hours there and all they did was balance my tires, so much for my siggestion to check out U joints drive line etc.

Get back in the truck drive away, same thing happens, wheel is shaking, truck is viberating going down the road.

Call the dealership back up, they say they dont have any more time today and that I will have to come back to the service center... in another week, of course. Well, what choice did I have?

Needless to say I was back, this time I was there for about four hours, working with another service rep and mechanic for a " warrenty repair "

they tell me they cant find anything, they blame my ties saying that these trucks do that and that it was partialy caused by the noise of the tires partialy caused by me having a light truck, with a 10 ply tire on it.

I asked them if they had swapped the tires off another truck to prove this theory, they said no, I asked what tire it was or what the problem was they said they didnt know, I asked them if they could 100 percent confirm that it was the tires. they said no. They informed me that my vibration was normal for these trucks and that it had been test driven and inspected and was good to go....
Got back in the truck..... NO CHANGE

I was really pissed at this point and running out of time, I had to go out of state for work and didnt have any more time to mess with it. So another two weeks go by, I go to seattle for work and then come back, the whole time I was on the highway it wobbling away.

Then, I get a cute little email from toyota asking me to compleate a survey on my dealership experience. I RIP into them..

Several days later, for no reason at all my ABS, and traction control light come on, my break lights stop working and my ABS is down .

This got me calling up the dealership AGAIN
talked with the same guy, set up a date and he mentioned " I got your survey, so while your hear I want to look into that problem again"

So, I showed up at 830 am on monday morning, sit there ALL day,
I go for THREE test rides with the tech, first was to show him the problem was still there, second was with a new set of rims and tires off another tacoma on the lot.... the stuck is still having the problem even with NEW tires.... it let the tech know that I had tried to have this done almost two months ago to no avail.
He asked me if I wanted to wait around while he yanked my drive shaft. I sad just FIX IT.
he yanks the shaft and we go for a ride AGAIN this time just running front wheel drive since there was no back shaft in, truck, improves finallllllly

He told me that my drive shaft had SEVEN or eight ballance weights on it instead of the standard two or four, and that it had come that way from the factory.

Needless to say, the shaft got set off to rebalance, I got sent home in a RAV4 and this problem is still not solved
pick it back up tomorrow.

The tech mentioned to me that this was the third truck that he had seen with this problem, and that he had to jump through all of these hopps just to let him do this. and that Toyota knew about this crap and they were still trying to pass it off as on a 20 ish MPH problem with their TSB

Any one else have a problem like this

we shall see what happens, I can not WAIT to get out of the RAV4... although the 30 mpg is nice.
cheers
td

 

Glad they finally found the problem and are going to fix it. And thats a load of crap they made you go through to get to this conclusion. good luck.

 

Thanks,
I have to admit, I am still not overly optomistic that the problem will be fixed
I understad Toyota has to make money, I am frustrated that they sent if off to be " Rebalanced" if it came broken from the factory, why am I not getting a new part?
I know that is slightly entitled, but the math makes sense in my book.

 

Good luck!!! Yes I agree they should have replaced with a new one!

 

Update:

The drive shaft got sent off to be re balanced. It got put back in yesterday and my rims and tires placed back on the truck. Took it for a test ride with the tech.
It does feel a little better but the problem is not gone all of the way.
Next step it to wait and see.
It took a total of four trips to the dealership to get this problem the attention it deserved and it is still not fixed all the way.
I am gonna play the wait and see card.
I asked why they didnt put a new driveshaft in since this one had come from factory out of balance...... yea
it was a classic dealer ship response. " that is what we were told to do"

 

Completely unacceptable. Hope you can get it fixed. Stay on them. If you're ever over in the Seattle area again try Rodland Toyota in Everett. They have an outstanding service dept and have in fact fixed my 2011 under 3 different TSB's with no resistance. Pretty happy with this dealership so far - highly recommend.

 

So wait , the driveshaft just became unbalanced ?

 

All of this happened at Parker toyota....

 

Apperently it came from the factory with seven balance weights on it, I was told by the tech that he is used to seeing four.

So it came, on the truck, messed up. Who knows why it decided to act up in the last few thousand miles....

When they put it back on the truck it still had allof those weights on it with the addation of a few more.... they said that if they had to take all of the weights off then it could lea ve holes in the drive line ....

the whole thing stinks of buill shit to me......
I understand I have a VERY light truck, with ten ply tires.... but I ran these tires for
Thanks for the tip on the Seattle dealer... I suspect I will be back over there for work at some point
tenthousand miles with NO problem ..... we shall see what happens

 

Each driveshaft is going to vary. Saying that the driveshaft should have a certain number of weights from the factory is ludicrous. I would have looked for any signs of missing weights since you said this problem didn't arise from day one. To just suddenly pick up a vibration means that an event had occurred causing the vibration whether there was a part failure or a tire issue, etc.

Also, Dunlop does have a warranty on the OEM supplied tires. Hopefully when you got the Hankooks that the tire shop submitted the Dunlops for warranty.

 

Yeah , unless a weight dropped off or the driveshaft was damaged by an impact or similar , why/how would it go out of balance on it's own ?

 

I took the dunlops back to the toyota dealership. This one was in Pullman washington. They said there was nothing they could do for me....

As for the driveshaft. Who knows. I live in the middle of nowhere three miles from the closest paved roads..... with that being said, while in winter the truck clearance and 4x4 are a must, the rest of the year I can drive my wifes honda civic down this road.
so I am not off rallying through the north woods of idaho

with that being said, I told them that I would own and take any accountablity if I had broken something, say if I had hit the drive shaft, or bent the rim.
they said it all looked good.

as for the the number of weights. The toyota tech said that he normally had seen four on this shaft before, but never had he seen seven, and the thing is that they were welded all over the place, in no apperent symetriical pattern .....
none had fallen off, no damage to the driveshaft that I could see.....

There is a thread on here some where about people having problem with the inner parts of the drive shaft tube? perhaps thats the problem.

The tires have been balanced twice, I am thinking I am going to go try and find a place that does roadforce and see what happens

Also, Waiting to rotate the tires back and see if that dooes anything...

Over all this has been a huge pain in the ass. Who knows, perhaps I got a crap set of tires, perhaps I did break something. either way I still do not have a one hundred percent answer.

cheers
td

 

I think you are talking about the one on the way out of town headed to pullman ?
it is right over the state line on the left side of the highway about a mile down from the turn off for the airport?

well they wouldnt do anything about my crappy tires being blown out. best they could say was perhaps i got two tires that were at the end of the life of the tire mold. no warrenty no credit nothing. Dosent matter that I lost two with in a week of each other with less then five thousand miles on them

they did two oil changes for me, thats about it. they managed not to mess that up but I cant speak to anything past that.

 

bit of an update....
everything on the truck is fine since they re balanced the driveshaft,
but what really made the diffenerce is when they rotated the front tires to the back...
they still cant find anything wrong with the tires but the shaking is gone compleatly
put well over three k on the truck since then
any ideas? anything i should be looking for in the tires? or just grin and deal with knowing half the time( every other tire rotation) the truck is going to shake?

 

You said the truck had vibrations when they put a set of wheels/tires from another truck and you test drove it.

Possibly a combination of both driveshaft and tires.....doesn't seem right.

Have you tried to balance the tires with beads or what ever that stuff is they use in tractor trailer tires?

I wouldn't accept the fact that you will have vibrations when you rotate tires. If the vibrations are bad enough and you drive it like that long enough you will develop other issues from the excessive vibrations.

 

In many dealerships rotating tires on a 4x4 means crossing them from left front to right rear, and right front to left rear. Radials in my experience dont like to be run "backwards" after an initial break in run, in one direction. Even if they are not directional tires. I have found front to rear , rear to front is the best "rotation". Please correct me if Im wrong. Bias ply tires should make no difference. Any tire engineers out there?

 

I think the stock tires suck.. How did yours fail? Side walls or tread or? My alignment was seriously out of wack and mine new front tires got some cupping on them before I caught it.

If you put the front tires to the rear and the problem is gone it's tires or rims.

So far I think the dealers suck and I won't let them touch my vehicle again.