Truck broke down today...

... ^^^... VERY possible indeed (no oil refilled & run dry, then refilled later), if I didn't miss something .

Just guessing if this is a "no oil dealer mistake" then TOYOTA Corp might only watch from sidelines, because dealer's problem.. I would think TOYOTA Corp. would want this engine back and replace it fast, and give platinum warranty, if it was their fault. This whole thing is not making sense.

 

Sub'd for the outcome.

Personally I think you're being hosed. Toyota doesn't have a complete engine available?

BS, complete and utter. I was in the farm equipment business for 20 years and when we had problems like this quite often the manufacturer (John Deere) would pull a component off the assembly line supply to get a customer going and maintain customer relations. To the poster who said Toyota only provides short blocks, do they give short blocks to the assembly person at the plant in Mexico or San Antonio and expect them to assemble it? NO, they don't. They may not offer a complete engine through the parts distribution division, but T Corporate has access to anything, anywhere, in Toyota control.

What I feel you need to do now is escalate this. Have you talked directly with ANYBODY besides the service writer at the dealership? I would talk to the general manager (NOT the service manager) and inform him of my intention to contact Corporate and invite him to prevent that. He can lean on the district guy (who is the one deciding what methods are used to repair your truck) to authorize a new motor.

If your truck had 50k miles or more, the solution they seem to prefer might be warranted. On a truck with 5k miles it is completely unacceptable. As you've said many times, you bought a new truck, not one with a rebuilt engine. One poster keeps mentioning how being nice and polite is the best option and in MOST cases with a simple solution I agree completely. This is not th situation you find yourself in however. Being nice in this deal is getting you run over. Be a bitch in this case, it's deserved and the only way to avoid being taken advantage of.


Good luck and please keep us posted. Fwiw I'm not slamming the service writer, his hands are tied. The Service Manager likely knows better but has to maintain a good rapport with the district service man. It's the last one who's being a jackass here.

 

What are your lemon laws? Dear Lord, I believe ours are something like 30 days of work to resolve same issue within first 12 months. I would be completely over it.

 

Actually the engines are built at the Engine Assembly Plant, Huntsville Alabama and they leave here complete and fully assembled, shipped to Texas for installation in a truck. No I don't work at the plant. I know some people who do.



Oh and I'm on board with the no oil theory, makes sense actually. An engine not filled after an oil change that gets started and runs will quickly get hot as hell, like really hot. End result is the rings burn thus allowing residual oil in the motor to get into the combustion chamber and leave the coating we saw on the plugs and piston heads. Lindsay gets back to the dealer and they add oil but by that time the damage is done and the motor is damaged, possibly beyond repair. Just a theory mind you. I could easily be way off.

 

While I agree with the no oil theory, do we know they did change the oil?
Lindsay, did they change oil at the 5k service, because actually oil change is not required until 10k unless you request otherwise.
If you could verify the oil was changed then we have a cause of failure. If oil was not changed at 5k, then with the oil light coming on that day, we could be looking at oil pump failure.

 

Personally I would give Toyota Corp a call, explain the issue, give the dealerships name and ask them if they are aware of what is going on. Inform Toyota that you are going to the media and informing them of the situation and drop the dealers name to the media. At the blink of an eye, Toyota will for sure be involved, because they don't want a dealership out there with a bad rap...trust me, I work for a heavy equipment corp (CAT) and it's done all the time. The customer will get what they want and deserve. The dealership is hoping your not smart enough to proceed to Toyota Corp themselves.

 

I may have said this in another way; but I agree, that you are being run over by someone.

I also have had problems with Toyota Service Directors, at dealerships, they can be in any manufacture's dealers. My Toyota problems were rear springs breaking ( no load in truck), Would NOT Cover IT. Then later (NOW), they are replacing springs. Ended up spending $600 of my money, back then to fix the problem. Lastly, I had a rear bumper that had a defect, and it had rust spots in those spots. They did replace the bumper, after a lot of whining; BUT screwed up the installation. Instead of a body shop technician doing the work, the service director had someone replace the bumper; who worked in the regular repair shop. OH Yea, he F***D it up. The dealers read these posts, so they know who I am now. She, the service director, wasn't BS ing me.

Girl, Time for being Nice is over.

If Toyota wanted to replace the entire engine they could, that is BS about only have short blocks. Would you want the person who installed by bumper, to install the heads and intake on your new short block, for your NEW truck?

 

That's not the impression I got. If she's getting a new short block, it will have new pistons. The pic she supplied show the old ones (the one visible it least).

What is the difference in cost on a new short block and long block (or complete) engine? A couple grand? Haven't they spent that (and more) on extra tech time that could have been avoided (and will still be adding up as they put the old engine back together) by just installing a new complete engine?


This whole deal has become a goat rodeo and the time to be nice has long since passed. Returning the old engine in her truck with new piston rings is a travesty and not what we all expect as Toyota service and reliability. I wonder if the posters theorizing that the oil was drained and not replaced are correct? If that's the case an entirely new engine would be the ONLY result I would accept.

 

I would call Toyota Corp immediately and explain exactly what happened. Their is a good chance they are completely unaware and the dealer hasn't contacted anyone. They are trying to figure a way to cover their own ass so the are not on the hook for running your engine with no oil. That may be what they are being so"nice" about everything.

 

If in fact the engine was not refilled with oil, then driven, all the dealer had to do was cut the oil filter open, inspect the filter, it would show signs of metal contaminants and bingo you have a new engine. but that didn't happen because the screw up was on the dealership and not Toyota. so now the dealership is trying to cover up there stupidity and incompetence without Toyota involved, or as little as possible. The more the dealership screws up the worse it is for there dealership rating, and the more possible it is for the dealership to loose there Toyota Certification

 

This is exactly what I am saying also...

 

I would let the dealer screw around and try to figure it out. Then enact the lemon law and get a new truck. Calling corporate now might bring attention to this and have them get the rebuilt engine in the truck before the 30 day timer runs out. I personally would rather have a new truck and not have any concerns over what may or may not fail in the future. If in fact the engine had oil delivery issues who is to say that the heads didn't get starved of oil as well

 

The no oil after change is plausible.Had that done in a road truck years agne guy drained oil,got called of,the other guy pulled dipstick with residual oilfilm on it.Cranked it and waited for pressure to come up....16000$ later...

 

I am not buying the "did not refill with oil" theory. There's no way the truck would have made it that far, especially not without some kind of warning light or the driver noticing some difference. And definitely not towing a load that heavy.

I would bet that Toyota tears that short block down to understand what failed. Manufacturers do this often, especially on new products. My guess is that something internal failed. Likely something was left in the pan and clogged the oil pickup, the oil pump failed, or possibly something in the cooling system failed.

Anyway, there's no reason to not trust a rebuilt short block as long as a certified tech is doing it. This will most likely be their first one since it is a new motor, so they will be going slow and checking specs all the way through. I wouldn't worry about it. They may seem to be hiding something, but my bet is that they are just short on experience and information on this new motor.

I sure do appreciate all you early 3rd gen drivers working out all the kinks before I need a new truck.

Good luck, OP!

 

Who makes a 3" lift for Toyota?

 

As someone who has gone through the "dealer forgot to put in oil" experience, I feel I am more than qualified to provide some input.

One time when I took my truck for an oil change at the dealer, they either didn't put in enough oil or didn't put in any oil altogether. The service runner pulled my truck around to the front of the building, and when I hopped inside I heard the unmistakable (to me) noise of the valves clacking away without oil, which prompted me to look at the gauge cluster and discover the oil light was on.

Anyway, I promptly shut off the truck and walked inside to tell the service advisor about the problem. To make a long story short, the technician said their oil gun was out of calibration and apparently my engine was never run without oil and was only two quarts low. While the tech was topping off the oil I had a stern but calm discussion with the service manager about the situation. He swore up and down that the engine had at least three quarts of oil when it left the shop the first time and he would make a note of my concern in my file. Of course I know that if the oil light was on and the valves were clacking away it probably meant the engine had little or no oil pressure, but I realized there was no proof either way.

I called Toyota Corporate later that day to voice my concern and have them make a note in my vehicle record in case I ever had any future issues with the engine. I worried about it for a few days but then went back to life as usual. The truck only had about 32k miles on it at the time, and I've been driving it for 2.5 years and 40k miles since then without issue. The engine runs perfectly fine and doesn't consume any noticeable amount of oil between changes.

I think that if they forgot to refill the oil or didn't add enough oil you would have noticed fairly quickly.

Of course after my experience I lost confidence in that particular Toyota dealer and have since moved on to using another dealer, which happens to be the original dealer that sold me the truck six years ago. I have had a much better experience with this dealer, including last year when they went to bat for me and had the pilot bearing in my transmission replaced at no cost even though my truck was out of warranty.

My advice is to wait and see how things work out with your truck before jumping to conclusions. As others have said, it pays to maintain a cooperative attitude with the dealership.

 

I agree with you Lindsay. There is no way I would accept Toyota rebuilding the engine in my brand new truck, I don't care what anyone here says about it, you paid for a new truck and that's what you should have. Not only that, but if they don't fix it correctly of miss something and it breaks down again it will leave you feeling like you can't rely on your truck to get the job done, whatever that job may be. My wife and I had a 2014 Santa Fe Sport with the 2.0L turbo which was a nightmare and melted spark plugs every 5000 kms. We had to interrupt a two week camping trip and drive three hours back home to load up her Tracker which has 220,000 kms (with not one single problem since day one I might add) and drive back to our camp site. After the fifth time having the Santa Fe in the shop for the same problem, yes it kept melting plugs, in less then a year we finally took an $11,000 hit and traded it in on my 2015 Tacoma. Yup that's a lot of money to loose but it got to the point that neither one of us wanted to drive the damn thing.

Good luck!!

 

This.

OP I have a feeling your truck will never drive the same after the "repair" those techs are doing. Lemon Law may be your only option, if not, I would probably ditch the vehicle and call it a loss.

This may sound shady to the next buyer of your truck, but it takes a little bit of time before a repair shows up on a CarFax which most people look at before buying. Most people don't use Toyota's VIN in their vehicle history website to look up history which shows up almost instantly after repair.

Use the gap in time and sell your vehicle before it shows up on the Carfax to get most of your money back. Do it before there is further damage to its resale value.

 

This is bullshit! A new truck with a blown motor?????? If you can't get a new truck sell it. It is true that race cars have their engine rebuilt but it's done by people who could probably do it with their eyes close because they do it all the time. We're talking about technicians who on average can't change the fucking oil on a vehicle. A good mechanic is methodical about his work, service technicians are sometimes pulled for one job to the next to the next if things get busy and they are short staffed. They then go back to the job they started working on 40 min ago forgetting in most cases where they left off.

Oil changes get fucked up all the time because they are one of the easiest things to do and people get complacent. I woke up one morning with oil all over my garage floor after having had my oil changed on my 2012 GTI, turns out the technician used the wrong drain plug. WTF?!?!?

I check my oil before I leave the dealership after every oil change.

 

Tacoma V6 engines come from Japan. The Alabama plant provides V8's for the Tundras built in San Antonio.