i hate the dealer with a passion

So I take my truck in Saturday afternoon for a tranny flush and an alignment I had called head of time and they quoted me $90 for the alignment and $160 for the tranny flush when I get there I explain everything to the service advisor he writes up the paper work and let's me know it will be $190 on the tranny flush because they gotta use "world standard fluid" if I'm remembering correctly I said fine they take it in for service and I keep talking to the service advisor about the tranny flush and how I'm a bit apprehensive about doing it he tells me everything is pretty straight forward and that everything will be fine and that there's even a coverage given by toyota to every tranny flush done he hands me the brochure that explains it but as I go to look at it on the front it says valvoline profressional services which I find odd he flips to the section that says my truck based on the miles 123k is covered up to $1000 at which point a more "experienced" service advisor walks in and the one that was helping me starts to explain my concern to the one that just walked in, he goes on to tell him about the "world standard fluid" and how he's charging me $190 at which point the more "experienced" one tells him that he's supposed to charge $300 he looks at me and says that he apologizes and if I still want to do the tranny flush to which I chuckled and say no he runs to tell the service tech I sit and wait for about an for the alignment to get done the advisor tells me there's a situation and takes me to my truck which is on the lift with the aligning apparatus on all four wheels so the service tech can explain to me what's wrong the service tech tells me the bolts on the lower control arms are seized and that all the bushing and bolt assembly will have to be replaced to perform the alignment if not the LCAs will suffer damage and those too will need replacing if the job is not performed in time I tell them to give me a total and that I'd have to be back at a later time they quote me $350 in parts excluding labor plus $90 for the alignment I get in my truck and start driving out of the dealer everything seems fine once I get on the road and get up to 40-50 mph my fuckin steering wheel is crooked about 45 degrees to the right when centered at this point I'm thinking about driving it straight through the dealership's wall, I quickly turn back when I get there I don't see the service advisor who I dealt with so I go in through the waiting area to get to the service tech as I open the door he's in there getting coffee I go up to him and tell him how the steering wheel is crooked and he needs to fix it because that's not how I brought in he tells me he'll take care of it I wait half an hour they come hand me my keys I drive off get up to speed as stated before and now it's tilted about 15 degrees to the left I decide to just call it a day as I didn't feel like spending the night in jail now it's Monday morning I'm sitting at work wondering what should I do should I go back to the dealer or go to an independent shop so they can give me a second opinion on those LCAs really need your opinion on this one sorry for the newspaper I wrote up, thank you

Parts I need according to them

 

If it were me I would find a nice mom and pop tire dealer and ask them how long their alignment guy has been there and how long he's been doing it. Most dealers and chains don't have anyone who specializes in alignments and it shows. There is an art to it and most guys doing it couldn't align a wheel barrow.

 

Call them, tell them they need to get the steering wheel straightened out and then you are also going to find another Toyota dealership to work with for any future services. Don't go back there.

There's a reason reason that they often referred to as "stealerships" on this website.

 

Man, I had to stop and take a breath after that read, feel a little dizzy.

First of all, take a deep breath.

Just about any vehicle will need some more expensive maintenance at about 120K miles or even sooner. I haven't done an LCA refresh, but that doesn't sound completely unreasonable for the parts. As far as the tranny flush, I have read other places on this board that it is just under $300 for a full flush, so that isn't out of the ordinary. A drain and refill may be fine, though, depending on the condition of the fluid and how you use the truck.

It is disturbing to get a much bigger bill than you expected, though. That doesn't necessarily mean that they are wrong or trying to screw you around.

As far as the steering wheel being turned, they may be trying to do their best with the vehicle in its current state. Annoying, yes, but they can't do the alignment with seized bolts. You could take it to another place and see if they can break them free, but they may end up breaking something.

Either way, good luck, bad time of year for a big, unexpected bill.

 

Here's my experience with seized LCAs. Toyota, in all their infinite wisdom, did not lube up the LCA bushings or bolts in the factory so they eventually seize up. I just went through this myself. A word of caution, they quoted you $300 for parts only but the labor to do this can be pretty major. The bolts seize to the bushings which means the LCA needs to be cut out and the bolts need to be replaced. This could end up being an ambiguous task and the costs could climb in a hurry.

http://www.tacomaworld.com/forum/2nd-gen-tacomas/217265-lca-question.html

FWIW, you can buy the whole LCA with new bushings and ball joints already in place through Camelback Toyota for around $160-170/side. If all the bolts need to be cut, you're looking at another $100 in bolts, washers, nuts, etc plus an alignment but the labor to just swap the LCA could end up being a lot lower. Check out the thread I posted, I put together a parts list of what I needed to be replace and how I did it.

 

Bet you they didn't "flush" the tranny like they said. Dealership I went to told me they flushed it when they just did a drain and fill. This was after a phone call the day before, talking to the service manager about what they were going to do, how they had a special flush machine, and how they were going to get all the fluid out.

Was pretty satisfied with it, until about a week later I decided to go under the truck. No evidence of them removing the tranny cooler lines, they had just removed the fill/drain plugs. Called them back, and the service manager said "we cannot fully flush these transmissions, only drain and fills." Fucking scumbags, totally lied right to my face until the job had been performed.

 

Thats also what they told me that they don't drop the pan they according to them have a machine that gets hooked up to the cooling lines and takes all the old fluid out and replaces it with new fluid he told me this after I asked about replacing the tranny filter he said there was no need as the filter was made of metal as far at the LCAs go ill probably will have to buy new ones if those bolts don't wanna come out when he showed me the bolts though there was no sign of penetrating oil being used or no noticeable effort being made to take th off

 

Even if the filter element is metal it would still need to be washed

 

I'm sorry, not trying to be too critical but... Oh my goodness, please use periods and paragraphs!! It's so hard to read your posts. I'd like to comment but I just could not get through your entire post without have to keep going back on what I just read so I just gave up.

With that, good luck with whatever you need.

 

I soaked mine for a week with penetrating fluid and they wouldn't budge. Once everything rusts together, no amount of PB Blaster is going to free it up. If you wrench on them too hard, you break the bolt head off then you're really up shit's creek. When my truck was brought in for an alignment, the tech put it up on the lift, called me into the shop, showed me the problem and wouldn't even start on it until I knew the risks involved. I opted out and replaced everything myself with some help from local TW members.

He's right about the transmission. If you paid for a flush, no dealership is going to drop the pan. They will remove the cooling lines, backflush the torque convertor and refill it with new fluid. The filter element is just a metal screen and does not need servicing. Some dealerships don't even recommend flushing the transmission.

FWIW, this isn't the dealerships fault, this is a problem Toyota created when the truck was manufactured.

 

Wrote it on my phone sorry

 

Thanks for the intel so do you think if the bolts are indeed seized should I bother cutting the bushings out or just get new LCAs

 

I think that's a decision you need to make depending on who's doing the work and the amount of money you want to spend. If you think your ball joints are going out also, then it might be worth just replacing the LCA entirely. The labor is definitely easier but you'll spend a lot more in parts. This could be something to discuss with your dealership. A LCA swap could be easier and the money you'll save in labor could pay for the parts. If you're doing it yourself, it's a comfort thing. I feel like I'm pretty handy and so were the 2 guys working with me and it took us damn near all day to do the bushing replacement. I don't have a shop press but the rented press from Autozone wouldn't budge the bushings and we ended up resorting to more drastic measures.

I will say that pressing those old bushings out can be a bitch. Mine wouldn't budge and we ended up burning and cutting them out. A shop press might be able to press them out but again, a risk you take with reusing an old part.

Another thing to consider, you could probably sell off your old LCA, even with the seized bushing. Someone might be looking for a core to press in new bushings to avoid down time on their rig.

 

When I got new tires (about 130kmi) I took the truck to town fare tire. They have great prices and also do a front end alignment for free. After the tires were mounted it came time to do the alignment and the technician came out to tell me that they couldn’t do it because my cams were frozen. My first thought was that a tech isn’t going to work too hard to do a free alignment, so I took my truck to my local mechanic. He has the truck straight and true in about 20min. no problem, $60 to know that I didn’t need new cams, I’ll take that. I ended up going back to that town fare tire six months later and got another free alignment after my lift.

 

Sounds to me the $190 they quoted you first was for a drain and fill... not a complete flush. Also, with the rust issues on these trucks those lca bolts could very well be seized up on an 05.

 

Good to know seems Boyd had a hell of a job with his three frozen bolts I sure hope mine just need some tough loving and doesn't have to come down to cutting you mentioned $160 per LCA that don't sound bad at all

 

^ I had the exact same experience at my dealership.

 

Get some pb blaster and soak the lca.

 

I followed Boyd's write-up, that's what got me through mine. $160ish per side but then you need to buy all the bolts/washers/nuts to the tune of about $100 (someone is selling a complete used set of bolts right now for $60 shipped BTW). Some of your hardware might be salvagable like the nuts and cam washers. The bolts will likely need to be cut out though.

 

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