Toyota Pickup Trucks Top J.D. Power Dependability Study

Found an interesting article at PickupTrucks.com http://news.pickuptrucks.com/2011/03/toyota-pickup-trucks-top-jd-power-dependability-study.html

Why do people try to slam the Tacoma so bad?

 

Nice, I JUST bought a 2008 Tacoma Glad to see it is the most reliable vehicle I could have gotten. 2008 model year is even the one mentioned!

 

Just don't lock the rear diff...

 

I love my 2008. Ha.

 

Why? I've had the diff locked about 50 times since I got the truck a week ago. No issues yet, seems to be working great.

Previous owner did overland/expedition stuff and said locker has always working great.

 

My 08 has 25,000 miles on it and has never been back to the dealer. I hope I didn't just jinx my truck.

 

They do work well, but there's a metallurgical issue with the gear manufacturing in the 2nd gen e-locked diffs. Anything more than light wheeling and there's a high incidence of breakage. Happened to me last weekend after "pushing" the truck.

Big thread on it over at ttora:

 

While yours and other new trucks seemed to have the occaision issue, in the very thread you posted they said this:

While in ten pages there are a couple of newer trucks in there, they seem to be anomalies.

The problem is also happening not when wheeling. In fact in those ten pages almost none happened when wheeling. Most were just during normal driving, not using the diff lock.

All indications seem to be this being a limited run of crappy ring gears in 05 Tacomas.

 

^^This and the diffs that were prone to breaking were the ones that have the Mexico sticker on them, and they were replaced with ones with a Japanese sticker.

 

There are more threads in TTORA about blown ass ends. That just happens to be the stickied easy to find one.

Note: It is ONLY the e-locked rear end.

And honestly, I'm not sure it's a bad run of gears so much as a 8" rear end just not being sufficient for the modern Tacoma drivetrain. This V6 puts out more power than most V8s did in the 90s. It needs what would traditionally be thought of as a V8 drivetrain. And it has one...except for the rear diff, for some reason.

 

I've read a piiile of pages on TTORA and Tacomaworld in my research and the rear diff has to be one of the least talked about 'common issues' for these new trucks.

Throw out bearing shaft and others are far more common, but considering the fact that people mostly come to forums to bitch or ask for help, there really don't seem to be many insane wide-spread issues affecting this truck. Especially after 2005.

Now you see the 2008 model being top for reliability, I'm not surprised.

 

Oh these trucks are still miles ahead of their competitors in reliability. Every vehicle has some issues. The diff item isn't terribly fun, but it's better than, say, a Colorado that's going to shit it's transmission at 55k.

 

You broke your third
BTW where are the pics from the run ?

 

My 08 was a lemon

 

Yep e-locker is pretty much too small for our trucks. You probably have great opportunity to swap whole rear end from sr5/sport truck and put ARB in there.
Thats what I would do. I would not even bother putting e-locker back. You have too much invested to worry about third member.
Sorry but TRD is now for show only

 

Damn, thats sucks man. Hate to see another name added to that list. I have somewhat abused my locker in the past, wheel hopping the piss out of it, going around 50mph in sand dunes, and spinning hard in the mud. Haven't had any issues but my truck is also on 265/75's and is stock except for a leer cap. Threads like this make me wonder about it though....

How hard was the third member replacement on the trail??