BRAKES FAILED!!

I have a 2017 TRD PRO and was driving on the freeway in Las Vegas and as traffic was braking due to a vehicle in distress, I applied my brakes and had no response at all, the brake pedal depressed about 1/4 to 1/2 an inch and it was like there was a wood block behind the pedal not allowing it to depress it at all... NO BRAKES!! I avoided two vehicles and had no choice but to rear end an 06 Nissan Frontier. No brakes and no out! After the collision, the brakes functioned and I was able to pull over. Even though the truck was drivable, I called for a tow, as I didn't trust the brakes. After doing some research, I found that there was a recall on 2017 TRD PRO for Brake Booster but after visiting Toyota recall website, and entering VIN, it said No Recalls for your vehicle. Has anyone had a brake issue as described on a 2017 TRD PRO?
Pretty shitty feeling having absolutely NO BRAKES and no outs on a freeway in rush hour traffic. I almost reached for the e-brake but didn't have time and needed both hands to avoid cars going much slower than the truck that I had no choice but to hit. Could really use any help or experience that anyone has had with this issue...even after the hood, grill and bumper are repaired, I won't have confidence in the brakes until it's figured out.

 

woah , thats scary luckily no one got fatally injured .

 

I can't say I'm familiar with any brake booster recall. As far as I know, the TRD Pro and TRDOR (especially before 2020) share most of their parts, including the electronic brake booster.

 

So they didn't work and then they did? I don't recall having heard of this happening here. Glad you are OK.

 

That is bizarre. This the first I have heard of this happening on a 3rd gen. Was there anything on the floor that could have got lodged under the pedal temporarily? If not, it's going to be near impossible to nail down the cause, if the brakes are working again.

I can understand your concern about this happening again, so figuring it out is critical. I can't think of anything that would temporarily lock up the brake pedal though, other than what I mentioned above.

 

Wow that sucks balls!!! Glad you are alright!

Is your Tacoma manual transmission or automatic?

 

Ironically, Toyota may be the best source of information. It would be interesting to see if there’s anything in the telematics that the vehicle logged.

I don’t know much about what they do and don’t log. If the airbags deployed, I think that’s a trigger for saving data.

it’s a bit of a wildcard, but maybe there’s something there?

 

That's scary, glad you are ok. The ebrake was a good thought, to bad you didn't have time to pull it. I would hound corporate and your dealership for information... Good luck!

 

Id try to replicate the fail on side road somewhere, clear of traffic of course. Do a heavy brake application see if it happens again

 

Sorry to hear what happened. When the hydraulic booster fails, you can still stop but it takes a LOT of effort. Clearly so much effort that in this situation it was too much and you couldn’t stop. Do you by chance have any mods like the Overland Equipped power tray near the booster installed?



Unfortunately if you do not have that tray then it must be a freak thing and you probably need a new booster as a result…..that really sucks to find out it doesn’t work when you need to stop.

I just looked up the recalls for 2017 and I see 5 of them. The only one I see related to brake boost is 18V211000, which is a vacuum pump failure on models with vacuum pumps. TRD Off-Roads and Pros do not have vacuum pumps because the hydraulic booster is electronic and doesn’t need them. So that recall wouldn’t apply. I can’t find any other recalls, but maybe there were TSBs for the hydraulic booster.

 

Were you on loose gravel with at least one or two wheels?

You didn't have a water bottle roll under the brake pedal area did you?

Been there, did that...........ONCE. You won't see a loose bottle anywhere near the driver side of the front in anything I drive.

 

Make sure you report this to NHTSB

https://www.nhtsa.gov/report-a-safe...mvVnFGwIwl4TcaAjgiEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds#index

 

Sorry to hear that.

The recall was for some vacuum boosted Tacos. Not applicable to the ORs and Pros.

Get the ECU data read at a dealer. There is drive data stored in the system.

 

Nobody else on the road will either. Pretty risky driving the thing until you are sure its been properly diagnosed and repaired or have you have done all you can to reasonably mitigate. If it happens again and involves other vehicles the criminal and civil legal systems will eat you up.

 

If you are 100% sure nothing was obstructing the pedal (such as the water bottle scenario mentioned earlier) you should report the incident.

 

This is most likely off topic, but isn't that a blue sea fuse block? Correct me if I'm wrong, those are rated to 100A combined. Why is there a 120A main?

 

I don’t know, not my photo. Just showing an example of that tray which has caused failure of the hydraulic booster in the past by being too close to the booster’s power wire and rubbing through the insulation, shorting it to ground.

 

^ ^ Best advice here.

Edit: Also - reporting incident, as others have advised.

If you are ‘at fault’, get with your insurance company to see if they can pursue anything with Toyota. If Toyota or dealer can retrieve anything, that might shed some light on what happened.

And don’t count on the e-brake. (Electronic parking brake vs manual emergency brake). It’s for -parking- only. On my Subaru, the e-brake won’t activate unless you are stopped and in park, and it disengages as soon as you shift out of park. On my SR, so glad I have the manual brake.

 

Was it low on fluid any recent brake jobs ?
Crazy jealous X ?

 

I experienced a total brake failure on a 2022 Prius. Just as you described except I was going slow and just bumped a van as I was able to apply the parking brake at the last second. Had the car towed to the dealership and they had it for a month. They couldn’t replicate the issue even with the expert technician. After a month they said sorry here’s your car back! The wife refused to drive it so we got rid of it. Good luck with getting Toyota to do anything for you.