Hey guys,could any of the problems Toyota is having been prevented when it comes to engineering ?
The talk of the electronic gas pedal,brake pedal,power steering seems like an added weight issue to an already busy ECM (PCM). I mean doesn’t the engine computer have enough to do already with the various sensors and engine management system ?
I for one like the tried and true method of throttle cable,power brake booster,power steering pumps.
Does anyone feel a 1 penny shim Toyota is doing is going to fix the gas pedal issue ? I say it’s all an electronic problem.
Any thoughts or opinions ?
Seems electronic to me too. My first impression was a software/progaming glitch that even the geek squad will never find.
Electronic only accelerators have always bothered me. Not for them sticking ON ( just put it in neutral ), but for them not working at all and not having any recourse to operate the car.
Now I own two of them and when I take a close look at the accelerator cable on my 92 Explorer, guess where it goes. Yes it goes to a lever on a throttle body, but that lever works an electronic throttle position sensor.
Even in 92 the throttle data was electronic and not one lick of problems then.
Your theory of the PCM now having too much to do is probably waaay too close to the truth. It may not be only an accelerator data issue but the massive mix of data, and somewhere they get the chocolate in the peanut butter.
And THAT is more scary than any fixable mechanical problem.
It’s easy to blame the engineers. Nut hindsight is always 20/20. My guess knowing that the Japanese supplier used a different design to prload the pedal against return and knowing how design processes work is that Toyota specified the interface parameters and performance specifications along with the design validation and qualification protocols and the pedal manufacturers designed and tested to meet the criteria.
Where Toyota really dropped the ball is in their failure analysis of field failures. Far more could have and should have been done there.
The funny thing is VW/Audi a company with a bad reputation for electronic parts/reliability has been using drive by wire on majority of US cars since 2000. This is without single incident and very little issues.
If VW can do it successfully…
From the miserable sketch in the newspaper it looks like the pedal mechanism is a sort of rack and pinion, with the pinion being the pivoting gas pedal, moving a rack device. It looks like they put the pinion teeth and the rack teeth too close together, so they are prone to jamming. They put in a spacer to move the two parts apart a bit.
Of course, I could be completely wrong, as usual.
As far as your worries about the poor overworked ECM, really you are imagining something that should not be an issue. Computers handle this sort of information all the time, very quickly.
The problem is cheap parts. Toyota went the cheap route from outside parts vendors and now they are paying the price. It’s unfortunate because Toyota has always been known for quality. This will take years to correct. Honda and other brands are now reaping the benefits for this Toyota blunder. They gambled and lost.
. I mean doesn’t the engine computer have enough to do already with the various sensors and engine management system ?
Car engine computers are very unsophisticated (at least by todays standards). The programming is very very simple. There really isn’t much going on there. Any modern chip can easily handle it…and be twiddling it’s thumbs 99.99% of the time.