No more Toyotas

[OTR]

I have an 07 Tundra and have never had an issue. I can put it in N at any speed and would recommend this before turning the car off. When you turn off the engine you will lose you power steering (and Brakes??) which could turn a bad situation into a really bad situation. I recieved a letter last month from Toyota to remove my floor mat and have heard nothing since.

As far as the engine over whelming the brakes in modern cars, I do think my truck would do this. I have to say that the Tundra brakes are amazing, but with 381hp and 400 lb tq, I would put it in N as fast as I could.

I belive they are going to replace the switching mechanism that reads the accelerator input that the accerlator is connected to. I'm glad Toyota is doing something about this.

 

[shawkins]

I notice the good 'ole 4Runner did not make this list, maybe that design is still their best? ;-)

It's one of the few models still 100% (IIRC) made in Japan.

 

[4307]

Just received my layoff notice as a direct result of the recall...
Oh well! i guess it gives me time to work on my truck. :coffeedrink:

 

[Wes Craiglow]

Just received my layoff notice as a direct result of the recall...

Prayer out for ya, bro.

 

[4307]

Thanks!
I hope this layoff isn't to long.
Oh, the life of an auto worker, can't win.. sheesh!

 

[austintaco]

Sorry to hear you got a notice. On the radio in Austin, TX, they said the San Antonio plant would use the time to do safety training and not have layoffs. Who knows if that's true.

I am skeptical about how bad the problem really is. This is America. Americans love to go to court and get what's "owed" to them. Toyota has deep pockets and is usually ahead of the curve on recalls and buybacks. My theory is that some of the reports are just people wanting to see what they can get out of this.

I was tempted to go to a dealer today and see if they could write up a deal on a Tundra for yesterday. I don't know what Toyota is going to do, if anything, for the lost revenue to the car lots, but maybe I could have worked a deal with the attitude that its this or nothing.

 

[4307]

Apparently Toyota Cambridge & Woodstock Ont. plants are keeping the hourly's working on, for in-plant projects and training. Woodstock was in the process of ramping up the second shift for the Rav4 line.

I work for a parts supplier for Toyota. Our work ground to a halt at 2pm.

LOL... this is a new job for me.
I came from a parts supplier for GM and Ford. That gig went south before the depression hit. Our work was sent down to Mexico. The corp. filed for chapter 11, emerged, the Mexican plants took a $1hr concession from their $3 wage, workers became disgruntled and management quit (go figure!)... Now the work that was sent down there, is coming back to my former plant. Apparently based on our performance and quality... OMFG! what a waist of time and money, meanwhile 1/2 of the plant took a severance. There's going to be a lot of P.O. former employees, many of which are working ****ty jobs due to the economy. But thats the game we play.
So, now I'm on layoff from 2 jobs. :lurk:

No worries, once Toyota ramps up job #2 will be super busy, meanwhile job #1 will ramp up in April, I'll get my seniority back, holidays and pension.. 15yrs worth. Job #2, I have zero.

It's all timing. The industry is cyclical, in order to survive the auto worker has to roll with the punches. It's always been that way, that will never change.

 

[corax]

why don't people just shift into neutral and let the motor bounce on the rev limiter?

we had an old buick that liked to do this. the throttle would stick and start going crazy. Find "N" - cut the ignition and pull over, unstick throttle, get back underway.

people are dumb : (

So if you can shift it into neutral... then why is this different from any other recall? Anyone who has ever driven an older vehicle should know how to handle this, as this kind of thing used to happen all the time.

... getting back to pity parties and blaming Toyota for the fact that you can't handle a tense situation. Toyota screwed up something. They are fixing it. If you have one of the affected vehicles, then rehearse what you will do if it happens to you, which is highly unlikely.

Don't be stupid. The buck stops with you. Get it fixed if it is a problem. If you have loved ones driving it, make sure they know what to do if the need should arise.

Freaking out without making changes never helped anything.

x2 - too many people know absolutely nothing about how a vehicle operates. I'm not talking about the nuts and bolts of it but just knowing a bit more beyond, "skinny pedal makes it go and fat pedal slows it down" I'm saying this as a field engineer for one of the Asian manufacturers - I see all kinds of stupidity on a daily basis (though less severe I will admit). My heart goes out to those few who had something go wrong and panicked or those who knew someone in such a situation, but really, if I didn't know how to tie a knot I wouldn't go mountain climbing . . .

 

[GlennA]

This has effected all Toyota products in one way or another. We have an 06 RAV4 that we are trying to sell. Unfortunately, anyone that looks at it now associates it with the woes of Toyota. We have never had anly problems with it, so I guess we'll just keep it.

Hopefully this issue will be resolved quickly and the workers will be back at work. Unfortunately, Toyota tried to "sweep it under the rug" and has soured consumers to their products.

 

[kweetech]

1. buy cheap toyotas now
2. wait for the buzz to blow over
3. profit

kind of like what I wish I would have done during the $4 gas...buy full size truck new, sell two years later used for profit

 

[TangoBlue]

Just received my layoff notice as a direct result of the recall...
Oh well! i guess it gives me time to work on my truck. :coffeedrink:

Very sorry - I hope it's not long. But I like your strategy to work on your truck and that sweet rack you built.

 

[Martinjmpr]

x2 - too many people know absolutely nothing about how a vehicle operates. I'm not talking about the nuts and bolts of it but just knowing a bit more beyond, "skinny pedal makes it go and fat pedal slows it down"

At the risk of opening up another can of worms here, I'd say that the prevalence of auto trannies has led to a "dumbing down" of many American drivers. With a manual tranny, you have to have some understanding of how the engine makes power, what to do when slowing down (throw in the clutch, downshift, etc). With an automatic it's just "put the magic lever into d and then press the skinny pedal."

As I've said here before, my vast majority of automotive ownership experience has been with MT vehicles. And because of this, for example, when I roll up to a stop light, I almost always bump the shifter into "N" because I don't like the vehicle "pushing" against the brakes - I look at it the same way I would if I was in a MT vehicle, where, unless the light was really short, I'd put the tranny in neutral rather than keep it in gear and hold the clutch down.

I'll bet a large percentage of people who drive AT vehicles have never had their vehicles in any gears other than P, R, and D.

In fact, I don't think it's stretching credibility to say that a large percentage of auto-only drivers (that is, people who have never owned or driven a MT vehicle) probably don't even know what the N, 3, 2, and 1 positions are for.

 

[cruiseroutfit]

I think in '04 all Toyota went to drive by wire as opposed to cable actuated, correct?

Not across the board. In 03' (prod 09/02 - 09/04) the Tacoma went to a hybrid wire/cable setup. Whereas there is an actual throttle cable all the way from the pedal to the throttle body yet that cable now turns an APPS (accel ped pos sensor) which in turn tells the butterfly in the body where to open and how much fuel to send. Same system was use in 04' but with the intro of the 05' Tacoma it was all by wire.

When the APPS fails on the 03/04 Tacoma it still has a 'failsafe' mode in which you get ~50% of your throttle pedal range available. Basically enough to drive home but not full performance by any means. I had two of these units fail on my 04', the theory relates to the extra heat of the Supercharger. Through some tweaking we were able to drop the temps of the TB by ~40* and thus have had zero issues with the APPS sensor since (btw APPS not sold separately, only with a $900 TB). When it does fail it would suddenly drop your RPM's to say 1000. You would be accelerating to pass a diesel or hop on the freeway and it would drop like a brick. Scary and dangerous. Toyota was pretty good about replacing it.

 

[805gregg]

it's "only" 100 incidents, 5 deaths and 2 injuries

way far from 200 and 19 deaths!

LA Times (3 front page articles in 1 month) over 2000 incidents and 19 deaths, why would Toyota do anything if there wasn't a problem? The NTSA started looking in to this, so Toyota, that knew they had a problem since 07, now decided to act. You Toy guys know that Toyota recalled some vehicles in Japan and left the same vehicles on the road in the US? 3 major rental car companies parked their Toyotas. Toyota says they found a fix in a redesigned pedal assembly, the manufacture of these same assemblies disagrees. Plus they can make 30,000 new parts a week, with something like 6 million vehicles recalled (I've lost count) that's 4 years to fix a known problem they could have fixed in '07. I'm looking at Ford stock.

 

[805gregg]

1. buy cheap toyotas now
2. wait for the buzz to blow over
3. profit

kind of like what I wish I would have done during the $4 gas...buy full size truck new, sell two years later used for profit

Lose your *** when the price goes to 0. Who would buy a possible death trap? It's not buzz when 19 people die.