Toyota Hides Lethal Defect in Highlander and Sienna

Sometimes, while perusing email from my kids, I get a gem. This one was pretty frightening. I read it once and then again and thought I would have to share it with anyone that reads the blog.

“Hi Guys,

This is not a rezoning issue but seems very important to get info out.  Several weeks ago, my wife and daughter were driving on route 32, and my wife’s entire drive train locked up and she lost complete control of the vehicle in relatively dense traffic at 55 miles per hour. The vehicle locked into a skid for about 200-300 feet, ultimately spun backwards miraculously without hitting anyone, and went off the road into some weeds, up a hill backwards and came to rest.  This was a complete miracle that they are still alive and unhurt.

When the tow truck came, they had to drag the vehicle up onto the road and could not unlock the drive train.  This vehicle was an under warranty Toyota Highlander which is a relatively common vehicle for hauling groceries and kids.

A lot of weird things happened during getting to the bottom of this catastrophic mechanical failure. The service mechanic said he had never seen this happen before.  But we sensed something was wrong from their
explanations and started digging into them, and by the time we got to the
bottom of the strange service dept behavior and double talk, service ticket
notes given us that did not make sense (cost was not a factor because its
under warranty), we finally learned that this is a factory defect, and that
there is a Technical Service Bulletin on it issued from Toyota to the
dealers, and the bad part is that the defect is cured only upon specific
customer complaint! Well how would you know until the failure actually
occurs, and then you, or your family, might be dead?  This is a very
frightening catastrophic failure where your wheels literally lock up without
warning at any speed and you lose all control of the vehicle.

Specifically, there is a potentially defective seal in the drive train on
Toyota Highlanders and Siennas between 2004 and up until 2009.

We have found on the net where others have reported major accidents because of this. It looks like Toyota is walking the line between a recall decision to fix, versus how much it might cost in lawsuits when someone gets killed.

The seal blew out all at once in our case and apparently spewed fluid all at once. It does not drip, we never saw any fluid spot in the driveway and this vehicle had just been in to Toyota  dealer service dept 3 weeks prior for its pre-scheduled maintainence. It happens all at once.

There is an initial funny smell, and then a high pitch whine for a second or two, and then apparently a gear tooth breaks loose and drops into the gear drive mechanism and literally locks up the drive train completely.  Your wheels lock up at whatever speed, and in an instant you have no braking or steering control of the vehicle. My wife said, and the skid marks all over route 32 confirm, that its just like having locked up wheels on ice and being completely out of control at high speed in traffic. This all happens within seconds while you might still be wondering whats that smell?

If you have a Toyota Highlander or Sienna, you need to look into this right away. Its very dangerous and the dealers and the service people are not
telling you, even though we have our vehicle in under warranty for its
prescheduled service right on time and faithfully according to the manual
since it was new.  We know that both Antwerpen in Clarksville where the
vehicle was towed knows this (they acted very weird and cagey even though
they were not our dealer or service center), and we know Fitzgerald in
Gaithersburg knows this because that is where we bought it and is our
service center, we ultimately delivered the vehicle to them for final
inspection with Toyota corporate rep.

Finally they both showed us the TSB after some hard pressing. They kept the vehicle for two weeks in the shop. We also know that the regional corporate Toyota rep knows this, because he was brought in and shown and photographed it.  They all know about this TSB, but since it says only for customer complaint, they are not going to say anything even though this is a potentially very dangerous failure that can get you killed. They did not want to tell us what it was even after it happened to us, it was all a bunch of double talk that made no sense until I grilled them over a few days down to the truth.  My wife and daughter were driving right next to a tractor trailer on rt 32 when this happened at 55 mph, only minutes before they were coming across the bay bridge from visiting her mother in Kent Island. She said she came within an inch of slamming into the tractor trailer while out of control in the skid and fortunately the vehicle went to the right and spun and went off the road backwards and up a weedy hill to come to rest without hurting either of
them.  If you have a Highlander or Sienna, you must look into this right
away.  There is no warning and the dealers and service people know about it,
and can fix it before it happens.

Sorry to take up the space on unrelated topic, but this vehicle is very
common around Mt Airy and this is something that can kill , and its
irresponsible of Toyota, which I have always regarded as an otherwise good
company, to let this go this way. They can fix it just fine. Maybe because
of the economy they are trying to get by, but either way, very
irresponsible.  Get this fixed if you have one of these vehicles.  The
service people, after everyone came clean, said that they ultimately expect
a recall possible on this problem, but you cannot afford to wait and see,
its potentially really dangerous right now.

The TSB (Technical service Bulletin) is for Highlanders and Sienna vehicles,
from 2004 through 2009. The (TSB) bulletins were issued from Toyota on June 11, 2007 and again on November 3, 2008 (TSB-0335-08). They can tell from your VIN number prior to 2009, when they finally seemed to fix this on the assembly line, if your vehicle has this defect. Even if your vehicle is new,
and you have had it religously serviced, you must complain to get this taken
care of even though it is potentially life threatening.”

So as a public service and in hopes that if you are driving one of these unguided missiles you will have it checked, I share the note.