Any truth to this article?

I agree with you. I would like to know a "generally safe" limit for fording. Not asking for a warranty safe number, just a guideline. I also wonder how accurate the inclination gauge is. One two degrees matters to me if 30+ is a problem. While 30 deg is pretty steep, it is not uncommon or unheard of for sure. You can hit that over a sharp step. Although, once I heard knock, my first though isn't "Hammer down!". That seems pretty retarded.

 

I live in FL, not worried about steep hills. The thing that worries me, and I'm a total newb so bare with me, is that my city is a gigantic flood zone, and all this talk about the tanny making contact with water and the wheels losing their much needed grease has got me like

Is there a way to quickly look and check under there and eyeball it? or do I need to take it to a mechanic anytime I drive through a foot of water?

 

He may be independently wealthy?

And I wonder if he's referring to a new baby or the toddler in the photo.

A toddler would not be that big of a deal.

A newborn baby?

Then he's nuts.

 

Marketing nonsense isn't legally binding, so that's an aside. All manufacturers are selling us road cars, not tractors, but what you've said is the fundamental statement. Being high clearance and 4WD they are selling vehicles that are expected to be used off pavement or at least on lower class roads.

So my $0.02 is traveling on transportation routes, which the USFS and BLM and highway agencies call "roads" should not be an unexpected use. Most of the time these routes are only open to street-legal vehicles and require you to have a license plate, so that surely must be an expected application.

Traveling recreation routes, which are usually called "trails" might be argued to be an unintended use. Those are trails that don't go anywhere and usually require an OHV sticker and would be open to non-street legal vehicles. In Colorado they are classified as "full size OHV trails" if you can take a truck on them.

 

Back to the original article. So, guy goes to off road park. Plays in water. 60 minutes later experiences smoking motor after hill climb (don't know how much drive time between the 2). Drives it to a dealer (no mileage accounted for). A couple days later leaves for a trip (no mileage accounted for between the dealer trip and leaving for his "epic" trip). Gets 104.5 miles into the trip and blows motor.

Seems like a lot of drive time between the OHV trip and the blown motor for them to be related. That being said, something is fishy about the story.

 

If you get enough oil to pool in the cyl heads because of slow drain back due to severe angles even a new motor can develop oil smoke . Remember a valve guide can pull vacuum during an intake stroke even with new valve seals

 

Did this guy really believe he bought a Toyota Racing Off Road vehicle because it has TRD on a decal on the fender? A real Toyota vehicle capable of running a BAJA race or race in Africa for several days across a desert would cost at least a half a million dollars if you could even buy one at all. Sounds like a guy from California wanted to show everyone how far you could push a Tacoma and still have it all in one piece. The photos were the ones he wanted to show you after Toyota didn't want to pay for his adventure. Lets see the rest of the photos. Show us the photos of the rock ,the size of a bus, you tried to climb or the stream with water up to the door handles. I'm not buying this story at all. Sorry. Good luck selling it.



If you're going to try to scam the dealer at least invest a couple of dollars at the local spray car wash to get rid of the evidence.

 

If you are driving through deep water just go slow and you should be fine . As far as the wheel grease goes just have it greased every oil change . When I say deep water I mean half way up your wheels , you have to use common sense , remember your truck is not a boat .

 

That's what I mean though. Should not, not cannot. After watching the videos a few pages back, I think that you could fairly say that Toyota sells Off-Road well beyond legal roads. Whether the truck is capable or warrantied is another issue, but they definitely want you to believe that terrain is within your limits.

 

Jeep probably paid him to fuck up the Tacoma and blog about. #Gladiator #FTMFW

 

Yeah, after reading everything again, I'm sticking to user error CA soyboy who thinks they can drive. We see this daily on TW, I know I am not very expeinced in rock crawling etc... But hey I'm not a CA blame everyone else first type folks

 

I agree. I just wouldn't expect it to be so severe that causes compression damage in a new engine.

 

Regardless of the arguments about car vs truck motors, I consider the engine in my truck to be a truck motor because it's in my truck. Quite an easy concept to grasp to be honest.

 

I drove my 2017 or back and forth to work during hurricane harvey the water was freakin deep every where I have no probs at all

 

I didn’t make it past his hipster picture

 

My biggest single complaint is Toyota put a truck motor in those Lexus cars. If I was a Lexus owner I’d be so pissed. Open up your hood on your luxury sedan and there’s a fuckin’ truck motor in there. It’s bullshit. Someone needs to start a website about this shit.

 

The 20R was used in Celicas as well as the first Hilux. The legendary 22R was used all over the place, Celicas, Cressidas, trucks, forklifts. The 3.0L VZ V6 engines were first used in the Camry before the trucks, although the 3.4L 5VZ-FE was only ever used in trucks. The 1GR-FE 4.0L V6 has only ever been a truck engine but the GR family is used in lots of places.

Point is "truck engine" is kind of a relative term with Toyota. Probably the only engine that can really be called that were the F engines in the Land Cruisers up to early FJ80s and that's because they were pretty closely related still to actual tractor engines. The 100 and 200 uses a UZ V8, which is in tons of Lexus cars and there's even a version of it used in Supra GT race cars.

So what exactly makes a truck engine? It's just like you say, the engine that happens to be bolted in your truck. Anything that makes a good "truck" engine, being over square, making torque off idle, being mechanically tough all can be beneficial to a car on the track or roads, too. And true "truck" engines, like the F/2F/3F in Cruisers, weren't great on the highway. So unless your use for your truck is being in low range it's whole life (like a farm truck?) having some commonality with road cars isn't completely bad.

 

I have to call BS on some of this in the article. There has to be some major details being left out of the story. 10 inches of water wouldn't even touch the bottom of the truck if he were to properly ford it. The writer most likely gassed it as fast as he could, shoving water into the intake, and then going up the hill forced the water into the engine from there. He goes on about how the filter was dry at the dealer, but driving for hours will eventually dry it. He also should have "worn in" the engine and drove it normally for about 1000 or so miles to set it all in. He kills me, and is clearly just upset he was an idiot with his new purchase and blew the engine.

 

I see a very simple solution. The person who wrote the article can get legal consultation and get a case going instead of slandering Toyota for it. With much evidence etc, he can win the case and perhaps Toyota would do something about their manufacturing built and branding. Otherwise, this article is worthless and I think since he can't do anything about it, he is unloading his frustration by publicizing his article.

 

Maybe this guy is peeved about the nonstop Toyota ads showing their trucks and SUV's conquering pretty gnarly terrain, only to immediately void your warranty if they find out you actually attempted said terrain. When they show that sort of stuff, it's called implied warranty and if they had any honor, they wouldn't be sitting there making techs ask customers if they "drove the truck off road". Heck, Toyota is now running those stupid ads implying the RAV4 is an off road beast because they added a TRD badge to it. People would do well to pull their head out of Toyota's butt, and not sympathize with a faceless corporation known for screwing over customers.