What actually CAUSED the famous, Toyota frame rust problem???

I can add a few things.
My letter from Toyota said there was "insufficient corrosion treatment" on "some" frames. I wonder why all the other stuff like rear end housings and the skid foil rusts away just as fast.
I purchased my truck new in Md, rock salt central. I was always pretty anal with keeping it salt free and it has zero rust.
In an early press release for the initial "buy back" program Toyota said they expected to buy back half of the entire production run from 95-00.

 

^That obviously didn't happen. 150,000 x 5.5 x 0.5 x $8000 = $3.3 BILLION. I don't recall Toyota ever declaring a $3.3 BILLION charge in its stock filings for Tacoma frame buybacks.

 

Has there been a poll for owners of 1st gens covered under the rust campaign that have not had frame perforations due to rust?

 

Well up here in Northern New England the Ford's ,Chevy's and Dodge's rust just as bad but you never hear about it because they don't replace them.

 

I've had numerous American trucks pushing 40+ years old with little to no frame maintenance done with no structural issues due to frame rust, including a '67 (47 years old) Chevy truck I currently have that spent its life on a farm here in northern Utah. The body is rusted to shit but the frame is still solid and you guys are here trying to justify the frames rotting in half on trucks that are less than half that old. Obviously there was a flaw in the manufacturing process or else Toyota wouldn't have been replacing them free of charge. If it was simply a "lack of maintenance" issue Toyota wouldn't have ate the cost of all the replacements due to owner negligence.

 

I don't buy this........My son has a 2002 s-10 lives in nothern ohio. The truck has suffered from some corrosion to the gas tank bracket and muffler clamps etc but the frame doesn't look like swiss cheese. I am quite certain he has done nothing to prevent corrosion.

 

Totally agree....

The older Toyota trucks (pre-tacoma) never had frame issues and some of those trucks are still around after 30 years.

 

My frame is rusted fairly bad and I have a 2010 . Living in the salt belt , its almost impossible to keep up with the corrosion . I am under the truck every year covering the frame with a layer of multi purpose grease
Only 1 car wash in town and they close their doors when its below -25 degrees which means most of the winter I am not able to wash the truck unless I drive out of town .
Not to mention they re-circulate their salt water

 

The old trucks did not rot because they did not use nearly as much salt etc. as they do today. NH scrapes the roads and finishes the job with salt there will be some snow on the roads in Maine when I cross into NH the road is bare and windshield solvent is a top seller. The frame work was thicker making the truck a great deal heaver. The domestic trucks I have seen up here rot just as badly, Ford's where the frame lethally breaks off at the rear spring hangers Chevy's where the entire top of the frame rots through and all of the cross bracing rots away. Chevy rear spring shackles rotting off and driving the rear spring through the inside of the bed. Dodge's where you can't tell what is what from the rust and the only way to get parts off is with a torch. Most of this boils down to the owners not believing their frame won’t rust because they shouldn’t, add salt and water you’re going to end up with a corrosive mix. Old Land Rovers had big time frame rot issues you can actually buy a galvanized frame replacement wonder how much that would add to the cost in a very completive market? Coat your frames the dealer is not going to do it for you.

 

Just my .01 cents. Toyota has been using cheap steel to make their frames.
I have numerous friends with Chevys and Fords as old as mine(2005), give or take a few years, that do not have large holes in their frames, like mine does. Yes their frames have rusting but not rot.

 

Given that my 2002 and I now live about 15 miles from where you are, I have to ask..... what do you use on your frame to keep it from rusting. I'm thinking of Fluid film in the spring. Does that make sense? Thx!

 

I see tons of 90s F150s, 1500s, etc with 0-very little frame rust. I actually see more 90s big 3 trucks than I see first gen tacos.

 

[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]For rust prevention/treatment discussion and alternatives see:
http://www.tacomaworld.com/forum/2nd...on-thread.html [/FONT]

 

I'm sure the chinsy ass paper thin frame on the tacos (at least 1st gens)dont help matters. Also, atleast around here, one thing that has sped up the pace of rust happening is the switch to some mag water crap they spray on the roads instead of sand/salt. That crap seems to eat your vehicles away alot faster than the salt of the past.

 

Your math is faulty...
Your randomly assigned 10600 trucks multiplied by your randomly assigned $8k per truck works out to $84.8 million, or roughly 85% of the total.


Plus, your costs are off. The payout from my truck when they bought it back was nearly $16k.
And on trucks that had the frames replaced there were often ancillary costs, too. Leaf springs, axles, shocks, control arms, etc. Plus additional labor costs for stubborn swaps, etc. And that doesn't cover loaner vehicles, either.

It's probably a safe bet that Toyota didn't profit from the Frame Fiasco.

 

My co-worker had the frame of his Sequoia replaced.
The loaner car cost is from the dealer, not Toyota.
All components were swapped, except the hitch, which fell apart when removed. A new hitch was an out of pocket expense.
Yes, fasteners were replaced, but only if necessary, and they were cataloged in groups of per size/length.
Toyota did not pick up the tab on struts/springs or anything else, just the frame and fasteners.
Warranty work is done at a lower rate than retail service billing. Best guess is that the cost to Toyota was $4~5K per vehicle.

 

I know several people who had frames replaced under the frame warranty and their Tacomas got new LCR's, new leaf packs, and in one case a new 3rd member. The dealership replaced those parts and didn't charge the owners a dime for them because they were deemed 'necessary to reassembly'

Besides, I remember several news articles estimating that Tundra frame replacements were going to cost Toyota over $10k per unit. I have a hard time believing that the Tacoma swaps were less than half of what a Tundra swap was.

Toyota was replacing frames on 95-00 trucks because it was considered to be more economically viable than replacing them. There were people getting payouts of $10k-15k, so it doesn't seem logical that Toyota'd opt to spend that kind of money for a buyback if a frame swap was only going to cost them $4-5K.

 

I'm sticking to my estimate. Toyota didn't have to buy new frames, Dana paid for that. As for what Toyota claims the cost was, I'm sure that truth is well buried in accounting mumbo jumbo.
I'm sure that the $10~15K payouts has more to the story than just the frame. First guess is that the components were still under some warranty or potential to cause liability.
We saw this before in the 80's with the dockworker's strike that left boatloads of trucks on the ocean for months. Most ended up getting crushed due to liability.

 

Yes, my frame is still black FF is a cheap fix. I cheat I own a lift but it can be done with drive on ramps. Go to HD buy a cheap Warner electric paint gun (about $70) spray it on do it again next fall. I plaster every thing except the exhaust (it smokes like crazy) bolts on things I may want to get off some day backing plates on the rear brakes take the share out just have at it. I'm in beautiful down town East Brownfield maybe 6 miles from Fryeburg want to do it next year let me know for a $1 I'll let you use the lift.

 

Its probibly a combination of over-salting the roads, thin steel frames spec'd for the Toyota's and crap mfg from Dana. Now claiming the toyota tacoma is the only one that has this problem is a crock of BS. On my 94 jeep yj the steering box broke off the frame due to a rust hole that formed behind the bracket, and i found 3 more holes hidden in the frame when i was doing an axle swap. Another friend had a ford explorer that the frame rusted in half and it was held together by the body bolts. My buddy has a mid 2000 f250 that hes getting ready to do frame patching on. My sister in laws mid 2000's cobalt has a hole rusted through the quarter panel. Its the year round humid climate here coupled with road salt that kills anything that's metal, hell Ive had parts rust to pieces sitting in the garage if they aren't painted! Toyota gets the publicity because they are the only MFG who addressed the problem and issued recalls on the frames.

Jlee: i have lived here in IL my whole life and i know of only two people that do any sort of frame maintenance on their vehicles, and both are wheelers. I'm guessing close to 100% of people around here never do or never have done any maintenance on their frames. Not to mention where are the maintenance procedures and schedules laid out? Is the method my buddy uses on his zj of spraying his old motor oil on the frame evrey fall the right way to go, or is my friend who paints his 4runner frame twice a year have the right idea?

I have voided my warranty due to welding on the frame, but my strategy is to patch the frame as i get holes, possibly build a new frame for later down the road, or swap all my parts into a different truck.