2017 SR5 DCSB 4x2 Loaner

I wish my wife had a "howling hole" .. just sayin.. Actually.. never mind!

 

Is this your first car or truck?

Every modern vehicle I have ever owned and/or driven lights up the oil pressure light, the battery light, and the CEL when you turn the key to the "on" position but do not start it. Every single one.

 

I like to buy American made when possible.

 

the check engine light will light up but turn off same as the air bag... mine stays on and flashes the check the charging system info.

 

The check charging system is showing because you are using power from the battery, but do not have the truck running for the altenator to put juice back into battery. It´s telling you be careful, you may run your battery down.
The check engine light is lit up because you have ¨key¨ on, but engine is not running, the truck can not differentiate from you just sitting there listening to the radio, or if you were driving and the engine stalled, all it knows is the engine is not running, but the ¨key¨ is on.

 

If you want to sit and listen to the radio you must put it in ¨Accessory¨ mode. I see you have it in Ignition on, that would explain the lights.

 

Yes, I am on the forum because I have a 2005 dodge dakota with the 4.7 V8.
I was considering trading her in for a Tacoma, but have not yet made a final decision.

 

What kind of shape is she in? How much are you looking for?

 

Only has 58,694 miles right now because I ride my motorcycle as much as possible. All stock SLT Quad Cab, 2wd. Spray in bed liner. My local toyota dealership offered 6,500 on trade. She has a few scratches on the bed because I do use it to carry my atv to the trails.

 

dakota has an underbite, taco has an overbite

 

rear differential issues would qualify as mechanical

 

Good thing the pictured Taco has braces

 

Random comments:

First, I love my third gen. I have owned 2 second gens. Overall I see it as an improvement to my second gen. Mine was built in late June and came with the transmission TSB already done. I have a few noises that others have experienced. Plugged the LCAs myself but have a whistling noise coming from the left side (yes I have seen the thread). But...overall I am happy. I am a sample size of 1. My experience, or any other individuals experience, is not a statistically valid indicator of what someone else's experience will be.

The polls here don't tell us much about the general population in terms of percentages. I don't consider myself an expert in statistics but I do use a lot of statistics in my work and know a lot more than most. We don't know if the people taking the polls are representative of all the third gen owners on TW, nor do we know if the owners on TW are representative of the 200,000+ current 2016 and 2017 owners. This is a self selecting poll (people choose to take it or not) which makes it very inaccurate in terms of getting a representative sample. Even if we had a representative sample not enough people have taken it to give us valid data. What we can say is that there seem to be a lot of people with similar problems, and the fact that Toyota has released TSBs to cover some of them says that the problems are probably pretty widespread.

Has Toyota slipped? All new products have issues. The second gens had lots of them (remember frame rust? Tailgates that bend if you looked at them the wrong way?) What I care about is how they handle them. It hard to tell whether they are doing better or worse than the other brands. Some of the problems are fixed. Some not yet. If you are the type who doesn't want to deal with a new model year then I would recommend that you wait...thees seem to be taking some time to work out. None of my problems have been that bad, but others seem to have been. I will say that I am not a fan of the penny pinching crap like not anchoring the passenger floor mats, taking away the drivers side handle, etc. Things like this are dumb moves and diminish my view of the company.

I don't particularly care for the new engine choice, but they are being driven by an ever increasing bar in CAFE standards. All the performance cars are going to smaller engines with turbos which I hate (not a fan of turbo lag on a performance car). You can thank your government that we can't have even an option for improved horsepower and torque for a 1 mpg penalty.

Oh, and I do sometimes get annoyed at Smitty's constant complaining. However, I can ignore him or just not read his comments. He, on the other hand, has to get annoyed every time he drives his truck and can't put it on ignore. So ..I understand why he feels the way he does and will cut him some slack. His pain is worse than mine.

 

On my phone I thought it might have been a snake.

 

I never said the dakota was a pretty truck. I really don't care for the long nose on it and the Bubba Gump lip , but under the hood is a 4.7L V8, so its worth it I suppose.

 

Theyve only really addressed 1 serious issue and one very minor issue. (Transmission and LCA tsbs respectively)

They need to be much more proactive and communicative regarding the other issues.

 

Perhaps. It is hard to deny that that some number of INDIVIDUALS are not being handled very well, which is some combination of Toyota corporate and individual dealerships. I'm just not ready to come to a conclusion as some have that Toyota has screwed the pooch on handling the 3rd gen issues as compared to how they handled the 2nd gen issues (I am still pissed about my tailgate). Right now the entire auto industry is coming off a horrible year dealing with the recall of 100+ million cars for Takata airbags and the supply problem only started letting up in July. Not saying that this is the case, but I could easily see how Toyota might not prioritize a noisy differential in terms of resources over this and perhaps other issues. I'm looking for more progress now that this is getting resolved.

In the mean time, I agree with people with individual issues screaming to their dealers and corporate until their issues are fixed and demanding good communication. While I recognize that Toyota may have other problems to deal with, you still paid for a vehicle that operates reasonably and Toyotas other problems are not yours.