Dealer said can't diagnose heavy cabin vibration because I have aftermarket wheels and tires

Discount tire here has been a great shop. I would bet they are the most used shop by members here.

 

I stopped going to them because they couldn't get my tired and wheels right on multiple vehicles i own. Literally every time I bought my tired from them it either took 3 retries to get them to not vibe or I went elsewhere. That's my experience and maybe the one here is just staffed by fuckups and retards.

 

Hey OP, I'm curious. At least in your state, what constitutes a lemon law for your vehicle? Like what is the criteria exactly that has to happen before you can lemon law

 

I think its the quality of people they hire and the rush to pump out as many sales in a day that's humanly possible to the point where they have to cut corners and rush to get the vehicles out the door, they over whelm un qualified,under paid workers.

 

It's pretty straightforward. Minimum 4 attempts to repair the same "noncomformity", only one of which must occur during the initial warranty period (which is defined for the purposes of the lemon law as during the first 24k miles or 2 years). I have 3 nonconformity's and I could have probably squeezed another one in there.

It must be your location. Both my dad and I have had screwups committed at Les Schwab, some major, but same as Discount Tire, they take care of those things. Discount did stuff for me like swap out generic TPMS that wouldn't work, with OEM Toyota ones for no additional cost.

 

As a former Toyota Service Manager I can assure you most of us were NOT salespeople by nature. And we are overly proud of the product we represent, wanting to see customer concerns solved in a favorable way. We know the difference between camber and caster, we can read diagnostic codes and have fairly intelligent conversations with our master techs, and can have the most boring conversations with customers about oil viscosity and longevity(just change it when the manual says and everything else is moot.Ugh)

But there are limitations to issues we could solve, and modifications were often huge obstacles. Aftermarket rims were a bit of a pain; sometimes I'd pull a new vehicle off the front line and put the tires and rims on the customer's vehicle to show that the main concern was rooted in the wheels. That usually meant I had to internally pay the tech for 1.0 hour's work that I couldn't submit to Toyota for warranty reimbursement. With suspension that had been modified to be stiffer I had very few options. The factory rep would often deny meeting with a customer that had a concern where mods had been made.

Dealers are not TMS USA, but their franchise agreement makes them very close partners. Federal regulations forbid a Dealer From denying a customer warranty work on a component that is covered under a manufacturer's new vehicle warranty, with a few exceptions(being violent, an overt asshole threatening employees, or vehicles that posed a health risk are some reasons to refuse service that TMS would have the dealer's back.) Over my 27 years I only had to show 5-6 people the door.

When I was service manager I rode with almost every new car customer that had a noise/vibration concern at time of write up. That way I could show the tech the exact concern. Without that test drive it was virtually hopeless trying to properly address the concern.

Cheers, enjoy the day
Jim

 

Git outta here with that logic!

 

Jim,

I wasn't being unreasonable at all. Nothing like that. The service manager, who is new to this location, was obviously coached. He was reading his questions off a fricking yellow sheet of paper! The previous guy was slightly more argumentative and what not, but he always did the right thing when it came down to it.

But yeah, the only option I was given is "buy a set of OEM Toyota wheels *and tires too* from them, or they won't even diagnose anything cause Toyota supposedly prohibits diagnosis with anything but OEM parts installed. I don't have any suspension mods, it's all straight stock btw.

Oh yeah, they also did offer to rotate the tires at 20 bucks a pop. Hell, they don't even have a roadforce machine and what difference does it make when the truck vibrates the same with TWO different sets of wheels and tires, one of which was OEM Toyota TRD Pro wheels?

 

This has nothing to do with the mods and everything to do with the fact you are in a "Lemon Law" dispute with Toyota. The mods are just a convenient excuse for the dealer to have nothing more to do with you as a customer. They want to wash their hands of you and this is how they've chosen to do it. You're causing them pain and this is their way of giving you some pain in return.

When people used to threaten to sue me, I gave them the name of my lawyer and said "have your lawyer call my lawyer; we're done here". Right or wrong, a threat tends to get people's back up.

 

FLA_Hoosier,

that is pretty much what I figured, pretty sad they decided to do this since the dealer has nothing to do with that case whatsoever. Of course, I was also costing them money with the repairs that Toyota wasn't paying 100% for, so I am sure they would be happy to see me go elsewhere.

 

I think the main problem is as you mentioned, the dealer had to eat some of the cost of repairs for previous warranty work due to them doing work not covered under Toyota's reimbursement for warranty work for who know what reasons. For them to get 100% reimbursed from Toyota for the warranty work, the truck will need to be bone stock or Toyota will once again deny their claim. They could for good of service, eat the labor cost of putting a set of takeoffs on and then diagnosing the truck to eliminate that as the problem, but because of the past denial and the litigation between Toyota and your Lemon Law claim, all of those factors could be why they are flat out not even wanting to look at the truck until it is back to bone stock and they are also not willing to spend any more money on you or your truck. That is just my opinion and probably why they are not budging in any way to help you. Like others have said, your best bet it so go to another dealer or try to find a set of takeoffs yourself so they dont have any reason to deny the warranty diagnosis.

 

That's not a mystery, I know why. The dealer is the first line of defense against persistent customers. When they don't invent creative enough lies to keep the customer away after repeated repair attempts, the manufacturer punishes the dealer by making them eat part or all of the repair. So the dealer, who should be mad at Toyota but obviously won't, is blaming me instead for Toyota's crappy lemon and behavior.

I'm pretty much done at this point. Why should I fix it up for them, basically, if they don't even care?

 

I have not read this thread but did meet up with @17trdoffroadbel last night to swap cat backs. It was a bit shocking how different his Taco was from mine.

It drives completely differently after having a bunch of TSBs done. The clutch is at least double the effort as mine and steering, shifting, and brakes feel completely different (sadly, worse than mine). I get it on the brakes due to the different booster, but fuck. It was very not good. I feel bad that he is stuck with this truck and has to fight to get it right. I can say that the stock OR suspension feels pretty nice. He took mine out and was shocked at the differences.

More than anything it shows the crazy inconsistencies about similar Tacos of the same year and mileage. Just wild.

 

I think this right here can bury any doubt anyone had about his truck. I’m lucky with my 2016 (knock on wood), but it’s wild reading other people’s trucks being utter trash in every aspect.

We’re all replaceable consumers at this point.

 

Exactly. I had trouble rationalizing all the weird threads that we get here. I rarely doubted others, but I always wondered if it was just different perceptions of different folks when it comes to vibrations, noises, and odd failures.

This was eye opening.


These days, consumers are beta (alpha!) testers with large sums of credit to use. Like you said, there are always more lined up to take the place of unhappy ones. It is strange times.

 

I gave you like for the avatar.

 

My buddy’s ‘16 drives completely different than my ‘19. He has all the surging, and odd downshifting, high revs, etc you hear people complain about. My ‘19 runs smooth as silk. . . I don’t know...

 

Exactly. And, it seems that there were a lot of good improvements as time went on.

But, I thought that things would be more or less similar between a couple of 2017s. I was honestly surprised from the moment I started rolling, same with @17trdoffroadbel in mine.

 

I just want to say that tonered is a super cool guy (with a really cool nitro beer setup too btw). I really enjoyed jabbering with him.

Believe me, no one was more shocked than me at how well his truck drove. Before I drove his rig, I really expected all tacoma's to drive like shit and I honestly thought people were just making excuses for them. But his truck drives almost as nice as my audi (!). I have to admit at that point, driving his truck, I thought for a second, jeez maybe I should just choose replacement and get a nice new 2019 TRD Off Road. Unfortunately, the way I have been treated by Toyota at this point precludes that option, sadly. My principles won't allow that.

 

Sign and trade! Honestly would want to follow the path of your clunker to see what they did with it. Be an easy CARFAX.