Of course this would happen (warranty issue)

I was cruising along in highway traffic last week and just happened to be hawking my odometer for the “magical” 36k target. As I’m watching I notice my tachometer needle start bouncing when I let off the gas. It was almost like the tach wasn’t in tune with the engine. Engine felt fine on accel and felt the same in deceleration but after higher RPMs and I took my foot off to let it drop to idle, it looked confused.

Drove straight to the dealer and rolled in with 36,015 miles. I recorded the tricky tach on my iPhone and showed it to adviser who scheduled an appointment for today. He said it should be fine because it fell under drivetrain warranty.

Came to appointment today and service dude has been a straight up dick. he tried to pawn me off on a tech (who actually turned out to be a cool dude). Tech said he’s replaced abut 25 clusters since 2016 and that the original manufacturer for the clusters messed it up so bad, that they changed vendors.

Flash forward to the service writer. Still rude and short. Kept insisting on it being out of warranty. When I asked if he could spot me the 15 miles (because that was about how far it took to drive to the dealer), he said it was over 200 miles out of warranty (had to wait a week for the appointment this drive it over the remaining week and weekend). So the tech said he was going to submit me to Toyota for a “goodwill” exception.

Good on the tech for helping a brother out. But the service writer sucked. I was kind of torqued because I’ve been a good customer, brought it in for every service, keep the truck in immaculate condition, and except for the mileage, it still looks brand new.

in case you were wondering, it is Liberty Toyota in Colorado Springs.

 

That's a crappy dealer. They'll never say it but most of the warranty stuff like that is up to how they write it up, even if they have to goodwill it they can writeup that the mileage was under when you reported the issue. That's just the service department being a dick because they make more doing off warranty work.

 

What is the mileage reported on your sales paperwork? That is the time and mileage when the warranty actually starts, when you take possession.

 

When I had my 17, the same thing happened with the speedo. At the time the dealer told me “never heard of this happening”
I’m glad for others sake that it’s a warranty item now.

I believe I only had 12k miles when it happened.

 

Good call

 

I just went up to the writer dude again and apologized but want led to ask if I was out of pocket for the visit. I got a very short and annoyed, “nope” and he turned around to do whatever he was doing.

Tech came out and said if they replace the cluster, they will have to keep the truck for at least a week. This is turning into crappy experience. Wondering if I should just trade it in for a new Rebel. At least with Dodge I know what I’m getting. LoL

 

Tech (again not the service writer) just came up to me and confirmed it is the combo meter and even contacted Toyota who approved replacing it. But said he has to get with the manager to approve it under warranty and get me a rental I guess?

seems odd that Toyota would approve a repair but the the whole thing could be kiboshed by the dealer.

 

I bought it with 8 miles in Jul 2018 (I travel for work so have a lot of highway miles).

 

was it like this?

 

Call Toyota Corp and open a complaint - 1 (800) 331-4331
My dealer refused to disable my seatbelt chime due to "legal issues" and corporate was more than willing to engage the Service Manager directly to assist with this. Needless to say once i told the service manager i had an open case number with corporate they disabled the chime

 

I hate it when sales or service ruins my view of a dealership.

 

Not as bad as that and mine saw the Tach not the Speedo doing it.

Here is video:

 

Still weird lol