Unsafe engine revs between gears 3&4, 4&5, and shifting out of 5.

Need to get a OBD monitor to datalog engine parameters. Such as the SnapOn one. It can compare throttle position to accelerator pedal position. Then you will have your proof.

Shoot. Inspect the pedal electronics if you can. Migh be something on there causing a false signal.

 

Let me get something for you.

 

As stated above, I have experienced the RPM increase when the clutch is disengaged, but never while in gear. Disconnecting the battery for at least an hour or two seemed to help. If you do this, try practicing letting up on the throttle before disengaging the clutch completely every time you shift from 4-5th gear.

One of the worst times this happened was driving down off of a mountain in western VA in 4th gear. After five miles of downhill, went to shift into 5th and RPMs shot up to almost 4K and stayed there for about 5 seconds before I finally dumped it into 5th.

 

I have that sort of proof. One of the techs gave me print-outs from their diagnostic tool which showed three cases where the pedal was at idle and the rpm's around 3000. As far as the pedal, they have swapped in a known-good pedal with no change.

Now the problem is that Toyota says it's Normal and safe and won't do anything about it.

 

I've tried this and it works much of the time. But if you're trying to merge onto a highway with traffic, you can't afford to do it. And in situations where something unexpected happens, such as the car that turned in front of me, you have to react immediately.

Interesting. I had a similar, new experience yesterday. I was slowing down to exit a 55mph highway. I had already downshifted to 4th, and didn't have the rev problem since I had let off the throttle earlier, and was getting normal engine-braking. As I approached my turn, right foot on the brake, I downshifted to third and immediately the truck stopped slowing down. I could feel the engine pulling and fighting the brakes. This was bad since if I couldn't make the over-90-degree turn, I'd crash into the side of a semi-truck. I stepped on the clutch and, while I couldn't look at the tach, I could hear the engine revving and feel the truck slowing again normally. This was the first time that, while decelerating and clearly not in the "rev cycle", that it started reving with no load on the engine. So this is another "failure mode" that the truck has.

 

I spoke with "Brenton", a Toyota supervisor, at 800-331-4331, Case#1610030909, who claims this is intended by design and that it's safe, and refuses to do anything.

So I went to Safercar.gov, a website maintained by the NHTSA. I searched the complaints for 2007 Tacomas for those that were similar to mine. What I found is that reving engines, uncontrolled acceleration and people crashing into things are common. C., the Denver master tech, said this "reving" was normal for the 4-cylinder w/ manual trannys from 2007 to 2010, but really it's across the board: both V6 and 4-cylinders, both automatic and manual transmissions.

I tried to screen out complaints that didn't seem to match the conditions I've seen but the summaries are often vague. For example, I screened out complaints about unintended acceleration at low speeds (there's several dozen). I have only looked at the 2007 model year complaints, but if C. is right, there are probably as many similar complaints for '08, '09 and '10.

Over the last 8 years, there were 43 complaints (including mine) against the 2007 Tacoma, where the descriptions match my experience. Of those, 16 exactly match in terms of starting conditions and truck behavior.

There's two letters from public figures, one a congressman, asking the NHTSA to investigate further, which they did in Feb 2008. Their summary lists 64 complaints and 24 crashes. There's a category labeled "Other" with 271 incidents. I'm gonna guess these 271 drivers managed to avoid crashing. So by Feb 2008 there were 365 total incidents concerned with unintended acceleration and open throttles with the accelerator pedal at idle, yet not finding an "easy" solution, the NHTSA closed the investigation in Aug 2008 due to "limited resources".

My conclusion is that Toyota has had significant problems with its ECM software for a long time. Those problems span model years 2006 through 2010 (at least), both automatics and manuals, and both 4- and 6-cylinder models.

 

Forgive me if I missed in in your posts, but has the software ever been updated in the ECM? It should have had the throttle pedal chop and ECM reflash (AKA Software update) to include the throttle / brake override for the recall that was issued in late 2009 or early 2010. Pressing the brake after the throttle is depressed SHOULD immediately bring the engine to idle, at any speed. More info on that:

http://toyotanews.pressroom.toyota.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=2390

You can run your VIN number to check for outstanding recalls here:

http://www.toyota.com/recall

In any case, you can request at any dealer that your truck be reflashed with the latest software if that has not been done in recent history, might be $100 - 150 at most.