Toyota Announces Accelerator Pedal Recall Repair
Jason Lancaster | Feb 01, 2010 | Comments 11
UPDATED: We have more details on today’s announcement.
Sources at Toyota’s sales division have told us to expect a major announcement from Toyota today that details the official unintended acceleration recall repair. As we reported last week (a full two days before the Automotive News made a similar report), the fix will be a type of shim that will prevent the pedal mechanism from getting hung up on the friction pad inside the accelerator assembly.
Accelerator pedal recall repair diagram
This shim will be a quick, easy fix, and according to Toyota dealers we’ve spoken with, parts will begin arriving as soon as the middle of the week. While Toyota has yet to detail the order that vehicles will be repaired in, here’s what we’ve learned so far:
1. Dealers will fix the brand-new cars first. Toyota has to start selling their new cars again – partially so they can start making money, and partially because re-starting sales will get this news off the front page.
2. Toyota is advising customers with sticking or “slow to return” pedals to contact their dealer for an inspection. Depending on the results of the inspection, your local dealer may or may not perform the recall immediately.
3. All Toyota owners will receive recall notices in waves. Toyota will send out recall notice letters in batches, but it seems like this is going to be a wasted effort. Toyota’s advice to “schedule an inspection” all but assures that dealers will be overwhelmed with customers.
4. The recall will take 30-60 days to complete. We’ve been told that Toyota has produced in excess of 1 million shims over the last 10 days, so the bottleneck in repairs isn’t going to be due to a lack of parts. The issue will be dealers being able to get all the work done.
Toyota Dealers Vow To Work Day and Night
More than one dealer we spoke to plans to operate their service department for extended hours in order to try and repair as many vehicles as possible. While this sacrifice is noteworthy – and will be much appreciated by Toyota and consumers alike – it’s important to note that Toyota dealers stand to make a small fortune performing this repair. We don’t know what the labor time will be, but most dealers expect to have a profitable month as a result of performing hundreds or thousands of recall repairs.
More info on the repair:
Toyota has pinpointed the issue that could, on rare occasions, cause accelerator pedals in recalled vehicles to stick in a partially open position.Filed Under: Tundra Recalls
My toyota service dept. is not too busy usually with more than enough service writers to handle the flood of customers. Maybe they will break even the next few months since everytime I come in, 1/2 of the service writers are bored out of their minds. The few times I haved called into them for repair work, they said pick the time and date and we can probably get you in no problems. I suspect this might change once people start coming in for the recalls. I’ll wait for the notices in the mail for my 09 corolla and 2010 tundra until I find out more information and repair issues, if any, that is going on with this so-called shim fix. I pray this shim will be the end of this dilema and no side effects of improper installation of this shim will occur. If found out this shim becomes a problem later on, Toyota will be in the tank. As you can tell, I am more pessimistic rather than optimistic. Thanks for the update anyways.
mk – For sure. I also hope this is the end of this business. I’d like to get back to more fun stuff than talking about recalls.
Jason, thanks for the information. As always, you are on top of the issues that we toyota owners need to be aware of. By the way, do you have the TSB number issued by toyota on the 2010 tundras having the wrong spring inside the engine for the VVTi gear assembly spring sticking causing an error code to check/service the engine?
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Mk I looked on both websited for TSB’s or recalls on the 2010 Tundra VVTi. Nothing I can find on it. I’ll wait for my letter and then set an appointment.
mk – It’s T-SB-0019-10
My question is; will the shim prevent the gas pedal from being depressed fully for full-throttle acceleration? Not that I do that often, but during occasion that (I would say most) Tundra owners such as myself would enjoy throttling-up, the thought of not having the full range of power available makes one think…
Jon – Great question. I read somewhere that 97% of throttle travel is retained, and that WOT engages somewhere around 90%…so full throttle is still available. If I can find where I read this, I’ll drop a link here.
The Toyota witch hunt is a big fruad.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3gQWGZ8uBw
My heart goes out to NUMMI employees..
Jason, EXCELLENT BLOG. I shared it with a few people.
lifelongToyotafan – thanks!
I posted regarding my experience with this on the VVT-i thread. I should have posted it here, I just found this….