The attached transcript from The Drive’s podcast discusses Toyota’s recall of 270,000 Tundras and other models with the twin turbo 3.4 L V6. They have manufacturing debris inside the engine that causes a spun bearing. The solution is to replace the engines, but that may only be temporary. The reason for the debris hasn’t been determined yet. An added problem is that the hybrids aren’t included in the recall despite using the same engine. Quite a shock, considering Toyota’s reputation. The Tundra is a great truck otherwise, but you might not want one with the V6. Here’s the transcript.
Tester
I have read in a couple of articles about the debris left behind in some engine problems. The theory is that this debris was always present but had little effect in engines with larger bearing clearances designed for 10W30 oils.
The 0W20, 0W16 and 0W8 motors oils demand smaller bearing clearances less tolerant of the debris. So engines are failing prematurely because of machining swarf and casting grit that passed through in the past.
Toyota has been using that “machining debris” claim for two years, Hyundai used it for a decade with the Theta II engine. Engine failures typically occur after 60,000 miles. With so much loose metal in the block and crankshaft, why aren’t some engines failing during the first 1,000 miles?
Manufacture’s script provided to Lexus dealers in 2024:
When the recall was announced, Toyota dealers didn’t want to get stuck with trade-ins that would become dead inventory while waiting for replacement engines;
Jalopnik June 2024:
Dealers Are Refusing Toyota Tundra Trade-Ins Over Engine Recall
Read More: Dealers Are Refusing Toyota Tundra Trade-Ins Over Engine Recall
Nonsense, aren’t Toyotas perfect? That’s one reason I did not keep my Consumers Digest (or is it reports?), the one that did not accept advertising. They were clearly biased towards Toyota.
Why aren’t the oil filters catching this stuff?
The claim is that the metal debris is crankshaft and block galleries, locations after oil is filtered.
Metal chips that pass through the engine will drop to the bottom of the oil pan, they won’t get trapped inside the filter.
On another forum people are draining the oil from 4 and 8 cylinder Lexus engines after 500 miles and finding metal flakes and chips. I don’t know if metal shavings that settled in the pan are a hazard to the engine but it has some people reverting back to 1960’s maintenance practices.
Far from perfect. Consumer reports has favored Toyota over the years but will also note when reliability surveys come back with problems.
Our 2010 Prius is one of the relatively few problem free examples. Even the blizzard pearl paint never peeled even with a 14yr paint warranty extension. A friend bought a used 07 Camry that got the oil burning fix for free and has been driven over 200,000mi since without further issue.
Aren’t Consumer Reports reliability ratings based on paying subscribers’ responses to reliability of the vehicles they own?
Seems to me, any possible anger should be directed at the subscribers’ responses and not CR . . . ?
In any case, I’ll take CR any day over Motor Trend and some others
I was referring to Consumer Reports STAFF evaluations of vehicles. “We test six midsize sedans”. Then they seemed to grade on number of defects, rather than the nature of defects. This is a lot different than their owners reports, the charts with the circles.
CR people loved using the term “adequate power” or a phrase like that. One comment I took as legitimate, rather than test driving was the 4 liter SOHC was not worth buying over the 3 Liter. I bought the 3 liter. Later I happened to drive a 4 liter, those extra 50 horses made a huge difference. That confirmed my decision to drop CR.
This is NOT to say Car and Driver, or Motor Trend are any better, they are not. But I will go to the library rather than subscribe.
Does your public library have an on line presence? Mine does and a digital subscription to CR. I can sit at home and read CR reviews.
Thanks for the clarification
No manufacture is perfect, I have jokingly said for decades now that all vehicles are junk, just some are much better junks than others…
But Toyota/Lexus does have about the best reputation for reliability, and in my years of working on or being the Service Manager of shops that worked on almost all the vehicles being sold in the USA (exotics not included), that Toyota came in on the back of tow trucks the least, and most of those where tire related or damaged suspensions… I started asking my mechanics back around 2006 what manufacture do they do the least amount of repairs to, not maintenance stuff but repairs, almost all said Toyota/Lexus… But all manufactures have/had their issues over the years and Toyota is no different…
That’s not my understanding of their testing. They have a scorecard and rate each vehicle on a number of different areas, assign scores, then add them up based on some assigned weighting. They’ve been doing this pretty consistently since the '50s. So there are three scores for a car: the CR test score, the reader-based reliability score, and the reader-based satisfaction (‘would you buy it again’) score. I look at all three when I’m buying a car, along with other reviews and my test drives.
Sounds like you were buying a truck when you went with the 3L V6. Your hauling needs must not have matched their criteria.
That and if you’re using Libby for e books I’ve found a couple uk car magazines with access.
Fuel economy is a factor when evaluating and making recommendations. Some buyers would choose a compact truck over a full size for the fuel savings. If power is a more important factor, the F-150 w/V-8 gets the same gas milage as the Ranger 4.0 L.
Does CR offer archive tests; a person would have to back in time to buy a Ranger with 4.0 L engine.
Cr does go back to the year 2000 online for the ranger but they don’t say much. Frim when we shopped in 2003 for a ranger the mpg penalty for the 2wd 4.0 was 1mpg over the less powerful v3.0 that Cr wasn’t impressed by. Dad fell in love with a harder to find combination but wouldn’t factory order for some reason.
In the past you could remove the oil pan and access all the bearings, except for the top of the main bearings. Is that right? I noticed that the newer engines tend to have short blocks that split in half and the oil pan no longer allows access to the full crank shaft.
They make a tool for removing the upper half of the main bearing.
Or, you can use a cotter pin to do the same thing.
Tester