2012 v6 at DCSB engine knocking @ 1500 rpm

My first Japanese truck was a 64 Datsun then a progression of Datsuns until I got tired of replacing head gaskets bought a Toyota and never looked back. I even owned a Toyota motor home it did not ping even pulling a 6000# load up hill with a 22RE. My worst problems were calipers on the older ones the newer ones rear parking brake pivots that's it. When my 2011 was new the 4X4 system did not like to shift in after awhile it worked fine and has since. Toyota replaced the springs no questions asked. Maybe people expect more from a truck then I do if I wanted a turnpike cruiser I would have bought one but they don't haul fire wood worth a damn. I owned a 67 427 Vett it got to the point ava fuel would not keep it from pining the only fix was water injection but it had no elaborate engine management that should take care of the issue. Has any one looked into transmission mapping and lockup points?

 

The drama is not mine I'm not the one with an issue. Your friends don't live in Maine where things rust.http://www.gminsidenews.com/forums/f31/2002-silverado-rust-104103/

 

Are you aware that Toyota has had very similar issues with rusty frames?

Drive through salt long enough and you're bound to have rust problems. That's just 1 reason to not live in Maine.

 

Hey, they DO have a TSB for that "bump from behind" thing. It's a complete rear driveshaft replacement. I had it done in late June. So far that's the only problem Toyota has been able to fix!

But it gets better - there's also a TSB for some V6 4Runners that have a harsh 1->2 shift (5AT). I see plenty of Tacoma owners complaining about that too. But, alas, no damn TSB for the 'truck' people. Just for the $45k "Luxo-SUV" owners.

 

If a modern engine suffers from spark knock under light throttle and moderate load, something is wrong. It ain't right, it needs fixed. This has jack all to do with "truck vs SUV". It's the same damn engine used across several Toyota vehicles, and it's the progenitor of offshoots used in others.

I guess no one else finds it odd that after years of howls from RAV4 owners, the 2GR-FE(short-stroked 1GR-FE) is no longer offered. All you get now is an I4 w/ a 6 speed slushbox. Toyota never did fix what was broken with the 2GR.

 

This truck is no longer enjoyable to drive. I expect it to be a truck. Harsh ride. Vibrations. Rattled. Clunks. That's all fine. But when a major mechanical system is constantly being improperly controlled (don't even want to see what my pistons look like now), that's pretty much it.

Deer hunting is cancelled (I'm going alone, so no backup truck, and the nearest phone/help would be a solid 15 mile walk. No rangers either, due to gov't shutdown). Not a big deal, you say? One year I woke up to blue skies. An hour later snow started to dump. I got the hell out and the pass was closed for 2 days. If this Piece Of Shit decided to die under the same circumstances, I'd be a goddamn popsicle (or I'd turn Eskimo right quick).

No thanks. Toyota has screwed me for the last time. I chanced it on the Nevada trip because I had 3 other rigs along, so no one would get left behind. This is not gonna happen.

Once I'm done with arbitration, I'll go buy something else if Toyota doesn't take this POS off my hands. However, until then, I plan to keep working this issue. I've got another month with this bastard, at least.

 

My truck is on the beach every day.. Im noticing this noise more and more.. last night in 4wd on soft sand,(good load on motor) it was knocking like a MOFO. loud ticks. such bullshit.. mean while my buddies 2007 same suspension tires and what not feels like a corvette compared to mine and he gets 20mpg.. something isnt tuned right on these trucks.

 

sorry if this was covered ive been reading this thread today because my 2011 just started making this noise and i got bored on page 6 but i think there is some confusion as to what "detonation" and "pre-ignition" are. also i would like to add that my truck didn't make this fun noise till i moved from Idaho (5000+ ft in elevation) to phoenix AZ, now that im inaz is when it has become a problem. so on to identifying sounds. Detonation: is when 2 flame fronts collide with each other. this happens when there is a sufficient amount heat, pressure to force ignition of the mixture to combust and this all happens a few degrees before TDC (10 degrees or so) then as that combustion event is building the spark plug fires and produces a separate combustion event and they collide with each other. this sound absolutely horrible. very noticeable. Detonation breaks things ie cracked piston, broken rings/ ring lands etc.....

Pre-ignition: is typically from a piece of carbon acting like a glow plug in the cylinder. this condition melts things ie holes in pistons, burnt valves etc.... this sounds like a penny bouncing around in a tin can and usually subsides within a few seconds, sometimes you cant tell this is happening unless you are using a scan tool looking at live data.

so thats the easy part of this whole dilemma. the cause of the heat and pressure is the real question. I dont care what a mechanic says or even a field engineer, a modern engine made out of modern materials should not ping or knock on a regular basis. pinging and knocking= death to the hard mechanical components of the engine. To me this sounds like a trait of poor design. again to me it sounds like it would be cheaper for Toyota to deal with individual complaints than to do a recall. but ill tell you one thing i didnt pay 30k for a truck that will kill it self. so it should be interesting to see what happens. im going to bark till its fixed.

 

I've tried to make one with the iPhone, but the associated road noise tends to drown it out. You can hear it quite easily in the cab, but the mics don't pick it up well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3KXX6xWul7c

That's embedded on page 4 of this thread. You can hear the knock starting around 0:03, and again at 0:14. 91 octane does not alleviate this. A mix of approximately 93-94 octane (roughly 50/50 of 91 and 100 Sunoco pump gas) makes it disappear. 93 may be a viable short term fix, IF you can get 93 (I can't). I'm not shelling out $8/gal for 100, plus driving the extra 15 miles to get it.

Would some other people listen to this clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS7HGv9opEI

And compare the noises. They sound nearly identical to me, but the 2nd is from a 2GR-FE at cold temps (owners calling this piston slap in the RAV4, I think). Can you even have piston slap on a warm engine? Never heard of such a thing, but my knowledge is finite.

 

Yes, the terms are used interchangeably and I know better, and they should be used properly. Thank you for offering the clarification.

However, it can be any heat source that causes pre-ignition, not just carbon acting as a glow plug. A too-hot spark plug tip, a hot spot in the combustion chamber unrelated to carbon (i.e. poor cooling), an imperfection in the combustion chamber, piston top or cylinder wall, and probably a bunch of other things.

In Idaho, your cylinder pressures were lower due to elevation because your mixture was physically occupying less space to start with. Not surprised at all - I noted the same in Nevada last week at 3800-4000 feet - the ping left. A day after returning to sea level, the ping was back.

One variable I cannot account for is Nevada vs. California gasoline formulation (or Idaho vs. Arizona, for that matter). However, I did bring back 5 gallons of Nevada gasoline (from an interior county, well away from the CA border). When this current tank is run down, I'm going to pour that 5 gallons in, get the truck nice and hot on a warm day (while we still have them), and test.

As for poor design, I thought of something. The problem is almost exclusive to 1GR and 2GR (and their variants) motors made in the U.S.A., with parts supplied by Bodine Aluminum and assembled domestically. The 1GR and 2GR motors dropped into other vehicles, like FJ's, 4R's and RAV4's (the first two built in Japan, the latter build in both Japan and the USA when it still carried that motor) don't tend to exhibit the problem.

I don't think it's design - I think it's shitty domestic QC by Bodine or Toyota assembly in the U.S.

 

What? I thought you fixed this with 93 octane and cleaning your MAF? It came back?

I'm assuming in soft sand you were in a lower gear (I don't play in the sand, don't know how that works exactly - I only play on dirt, which means low gear, low speed). I don't usually hear this in low gear at low speed, it's usually lower speed (30-35) in a high gear (almost always 5th, locked up TC).

WTF. I'd like to get you all in on the teleconference with the arbitrator and Toyota on October 17th. I know that's not possible, but they should face a virtual mob with pitchforks and torches over this crap.

Damn it.

 

i would like to join in.

even if i took mine into the dealer and filed a complaint they would say its fine as is. problem could not be replicated.

 

the thing that is interesting to me is the spontaneity of the situation. i had the "taco tick" sinse new but this knock/ping just started a week ago. im going to try and get ahold of a scan tool and go for a ride and look at the PIDs to try and identify what the sensors are reading and where the abnormality is. ill keep you updated on if im able to do so

 

Yes, this is not the Taco tick, most often heard at idle, or when driving with a barrier to the left of the driver (jersey barrier, k-rail, bunch of packed HESCOs, whatever).

Let me know what you find via the scantool. My ScanGaugeII is showing retarded timing when the noise gets loud enough, but I at some predetermined limit, the ECU stops retarding timing.

Looks like some parts of AZ switch to a winter fuel blend, and it looks like Idaho runs the same blend year round. This cropped up for me in early May of this year - right about the time California summer blend would have been fully rolled out.

 

The tool I will be using ( if I can) is a a snapon modis (oscope) so I can pull up PIDs on global function and also graph them. One thing I am interested in is the short term fuel trim and what effect this has on my long term fuel trim. I'll try to take pics of the screen and provide an explanation.

 

Sweet, you have access to nice stuff. I noticed LTFT's are different at different RPM ranges/driving conditions. At least that is how it looks to me. But again, I don't have the nice scan tool.

Can you pull up the knock sensor values on that tool, too? There are two...one is something like Knock Learned Correction Value, and I can't remember the name of the other. Limited information on them, but one seems to be a long term "learned" value and the other a short term(per trip cycle?)value.

This evening my bile is rising. I just wrote a letter to the CEO of Toyota. Not an email, not a web form, but an actual typewritten(well, laser-written) letter. I'll be sending it out tomorrow morning.

 

Yes I can bring up those values and they are displayed in a +- degrees. So like -3 degrees of retardation. So plan is too hook er up and drive the truck with tool in record then go back and look at the values. Should be interesting to get a peek at what decisions the PCM is making and why. I'll also be able to see the O2 sensors and mad and map all on the same page along with rpm to get a real good idea of what's going on

 

Did you mention the loads us on here with the same unresolved issues? I hope so, but if not I can always write one to do so.

 

I did not mention forum names, provide URLs or anything specific (tried to keep it short). However, I did specifically say that I can point Toyota at dozens of other owners with this very same issue, all unresolved, all without meaningful support from either the network of U.S. Toyota dealers or Toyota proper.

Still, it could not hurt to write your own letter. The worst thing that happens is it goes in a round file. However, I don't think that will happen. Here's why:

Years ago I had a nearly-new (just out of warranty) Apple PowerMac G5 shit the bed. I wrote to sjobs@apple.com and basically said, "WTF, dude? I'm one day out of warranty when the power supply dies AGAIN and I get 'talk to the hand'?" Mind you this was the 2nd power supply to die (first died under warranty).

I had a phone call from one of his minions the next day, they got the machine repaired for me and even tossed in some free hardware as a "sorry, we screwed up, this was a close call but you should have been covered."

So sometimes, someone, somewhere, actually listens to this stuff.

Maybe I should edit it and put something in there about "You DISHONOR YOUR ANCESTORS!" They're big on that junk, right?

 

You will be my personal hero for the day if you can manage all that. That's much more sensible that having to dick around with a SGII and make hard copy notes in not-realtime.

I had an old OBDII reader that could do that with a laptop, but it won't speak CANBUS. I need to get another one (WiFi) that can do that.