Died and Limped Home - 2023 TRD OR 4x4 w 15k ODO

Dunno but I'm taking BOTH credit cards just in case.
I'm sure it's fair considering all of the work they did but shop hours are $148 or close to it. Had two guys working on it off and on for a week and a half.

I'm grabbing it at lunch because I'll already be in Tempe and relatively close by. Have a work event til late. Maybe tomorrow I can scan, redact PII and upload the docs.

LOL - That would actually be pretty funny! Sadly I'm not that creative.

I think I owe Jobu a big one after this. Might have to swing by on the way home even though it isn't on the way home.

 

So I'm going to need to charge you a finders fee for referring you to Yota Pros...

 

Entertaining thread. Very happy that you may finally have some closure with the issue at hand despite all the prior drama. If you decide to keep the truck, hopefully it gives you many years of trouble-free service.

 

I honestly think if it was my Tacoma I would have put a few thousand miles on it after it was released from the dealer as being fixed. The OP is never going to know if it was really fixed because he didn’t test drive it long enough.

This could very well be money thrown away if it was already fixed. I really don’t think fuel injectors was the issue here. JMHO

 

I wonder if Toyota corporate would want the faulty injectors for analysis?

 

Then what caused misfires that Yota Pros saw?

 

The misfire was not enough to trip the CEL let alone put the truck in limp mode. As I said it’s just my honest opinion. Yota Pros are the pros here I’m just saying the OP will never know if the dealer fixed it or Yota Pros did because he didn’t give it enough time to see if the problem poked its head up again.

 

I know you were just going on.

I got some 5-Star dudes that work on the wife's 2017 Forester and I got Yota Dudes for my truck.
No dealer crapola for me. Vehicles are just too damn expensive to trust in the hand of flunkies....

 

I feel like crap for shitting on this post. It looks like a happy ending after all and well Toyota dropped the ball. Another strike on the dealer ship.

Please for the love of God. Keep your truck. This is probably going to be the last good Toyota for a long time.

 

I'm still in the pessimist minority and say this is not over. 100 miles of testing is not enough to call it 100% fixed. If you look at the 3.5 engine failure thread. Some of these engines will show symptoms on and off for hundreds if not thousands of miles. Then in the end, it was the head/valves all along.

 

I'm sure Toyota is good for it. Just open a complaint on their web site and tell Jennifer that I said you need $250.

 

Latest Communication TO Toyota Corporate...

I picked the truck up from Yota Pros yesterday. Total cost was $1235.95.

The team at Yota Pros drove the truck with the scan tool attached and the passenger monitored engine / ecu. They discovered there was a consistent repeating misfire on Cylinder #2. It was frequent and consistent but just under the tolerance level to avoid tripping the MIL/CEL light and throw an error code. They replace both port and direct injectors on Cyl #2 as well as the O-Rings that were part of the disassembly / reassembly process.

This is the kind of diagnostics and service I had hoped Bell Road Toyota would have performed under Todd's leadership. They did not. This is the kind of work I would have expected Toyota Corporate to have recommended. Apparently you did not or when you did, Todd did not listen / follow instructions.

I have now had my vehicle in the shop 4 times for this issue (3 for Toyota and 1 for Yota Pros) and a total of 25 days without my vehicle. Additionally this has caused a burden because there have been Uber expenses to and from service shops and family members who had to set aside time in their lives to ferry me to the shop. Additionally, my wife has been in a wheel chair, knee scooter, and in a walking boot due to an ankle injury. The Tacoma is our only vehicle that she has easy ingress and egress from and that will carry her wheel chair and knee scooter. Having not had use of my Tacoma during this time has adversely impacted her ability to go to doctors appointments and seek healthcare for the ankle injury. Had Toyota looked for the real problem and not looked to pin this on the customer this would have been solved on the first or second trip in to the shop.

At this time I am asking and expecting Toyota to consider the weight and gravity of the encumbrance on the lives of its customers in this case as you weigh your decision to compensate us for the out of pocket expenses to fix a Toyota Problem that should be covered under a Toyota Warranty that a Toyota Service Center failed to remediate after being given 15+ days and three separate chances to correct.

I eagerly await your decision.

Thank you.

PS - In addition to the attached receipt, I have a bag of defective parts that Yota Pros took off of the vehicle while performing this work. They are yours if you want them. Please provide a shipping label and I will have them sent to you.​

Now we wait.....




There's tax and a service fee on the Credit Card Statement receipt that aren't on the print out above. They bring the total to $1235.95. I sent that to Toyota but didn't include it here because the graphic image really isn't a value add to the discussion. But if someone just wants to see it for transparency, I'll post it. Kinda the same way I posted the pic of the entry on their complaint tool and the words because someone 12 pages back didn't believe I was actually entering this into the Toyota Corporate Website.

 

I'm elated that you seemed to have chased the problem down to resolution, but the ignorant in me (which, admittedly, is strong) wonders how a frequent misfire on one cylinder leads to the ultimate problem of .."The truck shudders but goes into drive and is in limp mode. Couldn't do more than 18mph?"
Is this question answered to your satisfaction?

 

Now that I have it back, how does it drive?

Well I've been driving the wife's car for the last week and a half - my initial reaction was "this truck is a sluggish turd!" Then I realized that it wasn't a two seat sports coupe with a BMW Engine and a Gazoo badge on the back. Duh. Once I readjusted my expectations it felt good to be back in the truck.

I didn't really notice any change in acceleration, performance, or anything like that. The highly accurate Butt-Dyno says same truck as before. I didn't detect those tiny hiccups that I had noticed before where it might have been a misfire or it might have been a crack in the pavement - not sure. But those didn't happen all of the time and were fairly inconsistent. Shifting in the transmission also felt normal like it has before. It's a 3rd Gen Transmission, what can I say? Always hunting for gears like Elon's kid hunts for boogers in the oval office. More driving will tell us more data.

I did notice one thing on the way home last night. - GAS MILEAGE!
I left my corporate event in Tempe at about 8:00 PM. Roads were mostly clear by the and the stupids were starting to come out. I was looking forward to setting the cruise at 5 over Speed Limit but due to the amount of people blowing past me I did 10 over. So most of the way that was 75MPH from Tempe to Anthem with a short burst at the end where the limit goes to 75 and I did 85 - give or take 40 to 45 miles maybe. Previously my Infotainment display would have displayed a bar chart of my MPG that ranged up and down like a picture of the alps highs peeking just over 22 to 23 MPG and lows around 10 MPG. This time is nice, flat and even. MPG for the trip was 18.8 MPG.

So with only one data point (very small sample) I am encouraged by the MPG of the truck. More so the even-steven consistency.

Thank you for hanging in for what has seemed like an eternity. Five Months, 23 pages, 20 messages in the Toyota Web Portal, 4 trips, 25 days of lost use, a grand in out of pocket expenses. It has been a ride. The encouragement and suggestions you provided have been invaluable - even the critical ones. Hopefully I get a fat friggin' check from Toyota soon and this thread can go dormant until Christmas when I ship Todd a wig, lipstick, and knee pads so he can suc...........

 

I too have the ignorant.

Is this question answered to your satisfaction? Yes - For the moment. Only time will tell really.

What was explained to me was that the occasional single cylinder misfire can happen from time to time - on any engine. Maybe it's a full dead on misfire - no fuel, no air, no spark and absolutely ZERO bang as a result. Or you have insufficient fuel, air, or spark and you only get a partial bang. So not all misfires are created equal. And the engine MIL/CEL doesn't come on for every tiny little hiccup. It has to be a repeat event to indicate that there is an issue. Like a misfire on 5 or 6 revolutions in a row.

This makes more sense once I learned that the 3.5 has TWO fuel injectors per Cylinder. One in the port outside of the block that helps to wash the valves and cool the engine a little and a direct injector that squirts gas into the piston chamber on the other side of the valve. I'm not sure what the ratio on how much fuel goes through each injector is. Apparently one or both was occasionally malfunctioning and not dumping the appropriate amount of fuel needed for the demand. Which would make sense that the issue occurs on mild acceleration - engine asking for more fuel and not getting it.

They put 100+ miles on the truck after the issue was fixed and didn't see it come back on the scan tool. I put 45ish miles on it last night and saw improved / consistent fuel economy. It looks fixed. But the other condition this occurred at was on the two coldest mornings we had in Phoenix - low 40° mornings. We won't see the south side of 60° here for 10 months probably. So I'll probably start to butt pucker a little when it gets cooler again.

 

I have no idea about this but would it not be illegal for them to clear the footage on your camera? Isnt that your property? Again, I have no idea, just kinda has a sleezy vibe to it.

What a nightmare!!

 

Maybe? I'm not even going down that rabbit hole though. It's done and bares no fruit to chase.
Hypothetically lets say yes it was illegal - is it criminal or civil?

If Criminal - How much evidence is required to prosecute? Who gets prosecuted - Toyota or employee that did it on behalf of Toyota? How much more evidence do you need for a conviction?
If Civil - what is the monetary value of the missing footage? How much more evidence do you need for a conviction?

All I have is no footage of the trip. And who ever did it, removed the evidence of them doing it.

And since the camera is an electronic device they can always say they "just unplugged it as SOP trouble shooting" so they have a legit cover.

No sir - not even wasting my time with that. It is what it is. Shady. Especially given everything else that has gone on.

 

I have 10 more pages of thread to ready to catch up on what is going on.

Everything I am reading points to a bad gas cap.

 

Wouldn't that throw a check engine light?

 

It's cheap enough, I'll throw one on for good measure.