Odd occurrence while driving this morning

I was driving to Home Depot this morning and the strangest thing happened.
I was driving on a relatively flat road and all of a sudden my truck started to surge, I looked at the tach and it went from normal driving to about three RPMS. My wife looked at me and said did you do that? I said no. the best way to describe the oddity was it seemed to react in a manner that the wheels were not on the ground and then they were. Very weird. It did it a few more times. I brought it home and parked it. Anyone experience such?

Bad Gas, dirty injectors, Transmission?

 

sounds like transmission to me, were you heavily loaded?

 

I was empty. I had no weight or trailer .

 

Hard to say. It could be water in the fuel... Have you filled up recently? Try some gas dry additive.

 

when you say that it went from normal to 3 rpm, do you mean the needle jumped up to 3k or do you mean it went down to like, almost off?

 

The normal RPM While driving at 45 mph is about 1600 RPMS, give or take. Yes it jumped to 3000 RP Ms' while driving. The truck is an automatic if that help any.

 

Do u have a Cai? If so a maf cal may be in order. If not may wanna clean than maf sensor. Start with the cheap free easy stuff and work Ur way up til it stops.

 

^^^Truck only has 12,000 miles on it. I have the stock Air Intake.

 

Take it to the dealer warranty?

 

yea take to dealer and at least get it documented in case it turns into something major. sounds like it inadvertently dropped a gear or lost pressure to hold the gear it was in.

gear choice in an automatic is very complex and involves most of the fuel injection system to determine which gear is best. a multitude of malfunctions could have occurred to make it think it needed to drop a gear.

if it slipped, (lost pressure) it could be a dirty at filter, low fluid level, bad pump, or numerous other problems, most likely mechanical. its going to have to manifest itself into something much uglier before it can be diagnosed, unless it gave you a trouble code. any lights on?

 

^^^I drive the same road every day many times.^^ It is still under the factory warranty. I called Toyota and the service dept was closed today. I will call them back tomorrow to have truck looked at since now the Engine dummy light is on. I hope this is something stupid and simple. I love my truck and hate to take her to the doctor. Them visits are always expensive.

 

My wife was thinking maybe the same thing. On the way home when I approached the same area I did not notice anything out of the norm. Squirrels, famous road kill normal for around here.

 

Well I just registered here and was going to create a new thread but let me jump in here as I have the same problem.

I have a 2013 DC 4x4 TRD sport Auto v6 4L 10Kmiles.

This is the only issue with my truck.
I have property in the mountains of NC and ever since I have been driving there I have a very similar symptom.

It shows up in 2 ways:

While the car in D (no manual shifting or gear forcing ) :
I'm driving up hill and the engine is at say 3K rpm... when I reach the top of the hill and start going down hill IT STAYS AT 3K RMP even though I do not touch the brake. To get it to drop down to 6th gear I have to shift to 4 and then back to D and it drops.

The other ways is while driving down a long down hill it will for no reason jump out of overdrive.. ( sudden increase in RPMs ). The remedy is the same - shift to 4 and then back to D to get it to drop.

At first I thought this was cause by the wind... the only source of resistance I could think of. But now I'm thinking this is not working as designed.

I cnat even smell the tranny fluid on this thing without getting under the car.

I also have 2003 which is running like a top at 150K plus!!

is it time to take to dealer??

thanks all in advance.

 

The only thing I can think of is if Instead of it being in Drive (D) it got bumped over to 4th maybe on the shifter column?? I have done that before and didn't realize I had it in 4th instead of Drive.

 

I'm driving up hill and the engine is at say 3K rpm... when I reach the top of the hill and start going down hill IT STAYS AT 3K RMP even though I do not touch the brake. To get it to drop down to 6th gear I have to shift to 4 and then back to D and it drops.

startboy, Assuming you have a 5 speed auto, not a six speed manual, it's completely normal. Mine gears down routinely going down hills, and holds a lower gear while heading uphill. If it is a manual, you've got bigger problems.

 

^^^
Nope, its an ongoing symptom just as I described. happened many times and always happens when I'm in the hills.

 

Its an Auto 5 gear. (options = D-4-3-2--L)
I understand about the uphill... but once I reach over the hump and the truck can basically roll downhill now - should not the trans automatically go to overdrive gear? Assuming there is no resistance.


And what is the criteria then for the truck to downshift on its own going downhill?

 

My 2nd gen will shift going downhill back into 5th. The only time it doesn't is on cruise control... POS CC design IMO. Was your cruise set?

 

As DoorDing said they aren't your old 700R4 anymore. It's something that I didn't really care for in the beginning, but after a few miles you get used to it, it's really just compression braking. I dig it.

 

^^^

Cruise control not in play.
there it is!! Everything I know about cars ( not a lot ) tells me this is the correct MO.