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Toyota Motor North America Inc. is recalling about 775,000 light trucks to
replace front-suspension lower ball joints. Affected vehicles are 2001-04
Tacoma small pickups, 2002-04 Tundra full-sized pickups and Sequoia SUVs,
and 2001-02 4Runner SUVs, the National Highway Traffic Safety
Yeah, that sucks. I guess they are going to have to beef up their advertising budget now to combat bad publicty. What a shame. :D
Every manufacture has issues once in a while BUT have you ever seen what a vehicle does when a lower ball joint goes out???
Yea, bad things can happen... Just like chevy denying for years something about the old trucks exploding during side impact.... Or Nissan p/u's with the front brake problems on the trucks and big SUV's... Be nice if they made a diesel truck here in the states...
Oh don't even bring up the Chevy side saddle pickup truck tanks. Dateline NBC's fairly sucessful attempt at screwing Chevrolet in that story was the last time I ever watched ANY "News Magazine" show. Took 6 months for others to discover that the only way Dateline ever got a nice, reliable explosion/fire, was to BOTH overfill the tanks AND attatch solid fuel Estes model rocket motors to the target truck, ignite the motors on impact by remote. The overful fuel tank was guaranteed to rupture and the fire/flame/sparks/particles from the rocket motors would ignite the fuel spilling beautifully. Can you say "RIGGED"?
Now, I won't say it is a perfect design, somebody show me a PERFECT design of ANYTHING and I'll be amazed. I won't claim automakers don't make design mistakes.
Let's not forget the Audi "Self-Acceleration Crash" problem. DId anyopne ever hear the final cause. Let's call it "Pedal Actuator Malfunction". The design flaw offset the pedals slightly more to the outside (left) than most vehicles and people swore up and down they stood on the brakes yet the car accelerated at full throttle with the brakes doing nothing. They missed the brake and mashed the gas, then froze.
Yea, will take a lot of ad $$$ to make up for it. Sure hope nobody is injured or killed if a lower joint lets go on someone on the highway. Toyota will survive though, I'd still buy one. You take your chances with anything.
Toyota is still best as far as quality issues. Don't forget, they set the standard worldwide. Everyone follows their trends.
Toyota will survive though, I'd still buy one. You take your chances with anything.
You're right abouyt that...
I just talked with Toyota and they replied that a T.S.B would be forth coming to all trucks involved. They also stated that of the numbers quoted that there were a total of six failures of lower ball joints. The letter will be for an inspection of suspension. FYI NSF
Every manufacture has issues once in a while BUT have you ever seen what a vehicle does when a lower ball joint goes out???
It's gotta be about the same as when the pitman arm came off on my 02 D-max...hit the ditch at 90 KMH...and not a scratch to the truck..we sank it into muskeg thank god! :D Oh the front bumper plastic ripped two plastic bolts or whatever they are called...14 bucks plus 200 to do the pitman...60 for an alignment...back on the road.. The dealership i bought it from denied it was their fault..so since then I have steered at least 30 sales to another dealership! we go through a truck every 6 months or so up here
Boy THAT would be a weird occurence hooligan. I've never heard of a pitman arm coming off. 'Course, that just means it hadn't happened to anybody I knew. :) Glad nothing was hurt but your overstressed adrenal glands.
I'm not sure how you connect blame to the dealership but you don't mention if they did any recent work in that area.