Water shorted out the safety neutral switch and worked its way into the transmission causing transmission to hesitate when switched into drive. Toyota tech said he worked on a lot of this models that have this problem but Toyota does not recognize problem as owners just pay to have it fixed as Toyota says its out of warranty even though initial shorting cause water to enter transmission before warranty was up
Was this documented with a Toyota dealership during the warranty period? If not, they are off the hook barring a successful class action lawsuit or voluntary recall.
An old competitor who specialized in automatic transmissions showed me clutch plates with the friction material stripped off and said it was common to see that resulting from even minor amounts of water. Transmissions were farmed out and when delivering vehicles several customers agreed with the diagnosis because they recalled driving through deep water very recent to the sudden failure. Even a few table spoons of water would supposedly soak into the friction material then after a few miles of driving heat would boil the water destroy the glue. bond. Of course that was in the good ole days before CVTs.
Were you doing any driving through bumper deep water? If so, then this is on you.
There’s a price to be paid for motoring through deep water and transmissions are not the only thing affected. Wheel bearings, suspension and steering components, you name it, And in some cases trashed engines.
Gentlemen, I was not driving through any deep water …there was a leak in the safety neutral switch which I had replaced 3 months after the 3 year electrical warranty ran out. As a result of this leak water found its way into the the transmission and caused the input shaft to become rusted out …all this happened just after the warranty ran out on the drive train (5 years)…I spoke to a Toyota technician and he said they replace a lot of transmissions due to this but so far Toyota has not issued a recall. I have issued a complaint with the NHTSB and hope other Toyota owners will do the same, but many just pay the $3K and don’t know how to start a class action suit. Toyota has also recently closed down a portion of their web site where owners could communicate with one another so no one can get together and compare notes…