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2024 Tacoma TRD Pro Full Transmission Replacement After 342 Miles

fostuhh

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Wanted to repost here from my TW post:

A true dream of a road trip turned out to be an absolute nightmare this past weekend. It’s a bit of a lengthy one but I’ll toss in a TLDR at the bottom.

Drove out from Arizona to Northern California to pick up my brand new TRD Pro in Ice Cap. I had been dreaming about this since they announced the new gen Tacoma and was elated when I knew the truck would finally arrive. So, let’s get into it.

To start the long story on a short note, I had planned the 11-hour road trip from AZ to nearly San Francisco since I was trading in my current vehicle (VW Golf R) at the dealer. So, flying out and picking up the truck wasn’t an option. Off we went at 3am on Friday to make sure we arrived early enough at the dealer to give some time to make some headway on the 2nd day of driving on Saturday.

We arrived at the dealer around 3pm on Friday and there she was, sitting out front, and the excitement truly set it. I was speechless, finally getting to see it in person and sit in the driver’s seat and get to say it really was mine. I know A LOT of people on here will hate on it and say it isn’t worth the money, but to me it was, and it still is. After all the fun events of purchasing the truck were complete, we were ready to go, taking a nice 4 ½ hour drive south down near Bakersfield to chill for the evening and wake up to finish our trip.

First impressions when starting off on this journey back home, one thing comes to mind. I saw someone else mention their description of driving the truck as “this thing floats” and there is no better way to describe it. This thing really does float, the seats are wonderful, no matter how much space they take away from the rear, I don’t care, they are so sick. I bought this thing for me, not to haul people around, I would’ve gotten a sedan if I wanted to do that. Nothing but rave reviews about this thing drove, even in awful California traffic, it was a dream. The interior is beautiful, and everything was exactly what I wanted and expected, if not better.

The next day after crashing out at the hotel for a few hours, we head out around 7am to make the last 7-hour trek back home. All was well, until about 30 minutes into the drive.

Heading up the 5 freeway in CA. Going around 70mph at the time. I was approaching a slow-moving vehicle in the far-right lane, so I merged into the middle lane, just before we started heading up the hill into the mountains. I began to accelerate up the hill, when all of a sudden, something sounded and felt like it popped in the middle to rear of the truck. All of a sudden, the truck redlined 3-4 times, like it was searching for a gear, I was able to slow down and it settled down around 50 mph. Christmas tree galore on the dash, I was able to get up to a pull off on the side of the freeway and turn the truck off for 15-20 minutes. After letting it rest for a bit, it started up just fine, the lights had subsided and the only thing that was coming up was a “Hybrid System Malfunction – Visit your Dealer” in the center of the dash. The hybrid system was active and “Ready” and it would move just fine under hybrid and engine power. We made the decision to go ahead and drive it down the 40 miles to the nearest dealer to see what’s going on. It drove just fine, shifted totally fine, Hybrid system would engage and re-engage just as it had before so I thought it may have just been a weird disconnect for the moment and just needed a quick once over.

We get down to the dealer. After about 2 hours I get a call to come back to where they proceeds to tell me that they can’t do much on the truck as Toyota Technical Support is not available on the weekend and would need to wait for Monday. But claimed the issue was either transmission or differential but would not provide me with what codes they may have found or how they came to that determination.

My fiancée and I then scrambled to determine how we should proceed, they were amazing. Offered 3-4 solutions, we went ahead with them covering the costs of a rental car and also transporting the truck back home to AZ. So, we end up going home in the rental and the rest of the day is history.


Sunday comes around and I am having issues with the transport company saying they won’t be able to pick up the truck until late in the week and wouldn’t give a solid day so the communication with the dealers was an absolute mess. I still also don’t have the work order from the service tech to show me what they had found or what the codes were so I am beyond annoyed at this point.

Cut to this morning. I went ahead and reached out to the Service Director at the dealer where the truck is currently at and explain my situation to him and he is already 100x more helpful than the tech. He went ahead and pulled up all the information and told me that the initial code that was found was for an Internal Transmission Solenoid issue. At first, I was somewhat relieved by this, as it seemed like it should be a fairly easy fix. But they still needed to contact Toyota Support and work with the Engineers to determine how they wanted to proceed with the situation. 2 hours goes by and I get the call. Toyota decided not to take any chances with anything else on the Transmission being faulty and opted for a full Transmission replacement.

So, here I am, 342 miles on my dream truck and it is stranded 400 miles away. They say it should take a week or so for the parts to arrive at the dealer and then a day or two for the install. Which then my dealer is covering the costs of flying out and bringing the truck home. Part of me is relieved that it’s going to be a full replacement, but the impatient part of me wishes they could just replace the solenoid and call it good.

But hey, if anyone else experiences the same thing, then at least this story is out there. Because I had nothing to reference and only anger and panic to work through.

Also, here's a pic of the beauty 45 minutes before her downfall.

trdpro-jpg.jpg


TLDR; Bought a new ’24 TRD Pro, truck freaked out on the drive home. Threw Hybrid malfunction errors and now Toyota is replacing the Transmission on a 342 mile old truck.
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Deleted User 1813921

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I made it 26 miles away from Aprilla motorcycle dealership on a brand new bike and felt my foot burning looked down foot covered in hot oil I almost dropped the bike racing to get kickstand down and toss that boot off! They gave me three choices new engine new bike cancel deal. I canceled. 10 years later first generation new Yamaha YZFR1 had to lemon law in California. Non disclosure agreement preventing any details about that. So my advice is and I was told this immediately from my attorney do not talk about this to anyone and he said especially those online forums what you say show tell could be used against you. Hopefully you have a quick fix and do not have to do anything other than enjoy your truck. Good luck and from someone who has dealt with this situation remember you can go beyond your dealership and speak with Toyota directly if Not satisfied.
 

TacoFreak

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No way around it - that sucks. I think you have the new record for the earliest 4th gen transmission failure so far.

My TRD Pro was built three days ago and I would love to think it will be a normal, trouble free Toyota. But with all of the transmission failures I know I can't count on that. Some have died fast like your truck and others only after thousands of miles. I know I will love my truck, but I will also be holding my breath whenever I travel in it. To make it worse for me it will be our road trip vehicle, since my wife just bought a new electric SUV.

Good luck. It looks like Toyota is handling this as well as possible, but there is obviously some serious design or build deficiency in 4th gen Tacoma transmissions.
 

Tom Sellick

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Ugh. All these stories along with the holds.....wonder how the Land Cruiser has been fairing. 😬
 

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TalkingTaco444

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I’m sure this wasn’t the issue, but you aren’t supposed to be using cruise control or holding Rpms on the highway that earlier into the engine lifecycle.

glad you are getting it taken care of though!
 

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bitflogger

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@fostuhh I hope it gets resolved well. I can't imaging going from a Golf R to a Tacoma but our pickup purchase was for a work oriented vehicle and leaves us with a manual transmission last ever Alltrack.

My best tip for any sort of service is handle it all as cheery as possible even if you don't feel that way inside. It gets you the most out of someone you have to depend on. Good luck!

I’m sure this wasn’t the issue, but you aren’t supposed to be using cruise control or holding Rpms on the highway that earlier into the engine lifecycle.

glad you are getting it taken care of though!
You're supposed to vary speed vs not use cruise control, avoid hard braking, not tow, and avoid hard acceleration at first. Still keep at the modest and varied use up to 1000 miles.

Lots of big transmission issues. Probably best to hold off for now.
Can you support that with evidence? Well more than 100,000 have shipped now. The dealer service staff we usually go to close to home and where we bought the pickup 44 mi away both say nothing is standing out as problematic or much different than other new and recent models as can happen.

My biggest fear with any warranty claim would be same with all brands. Parts shortages have been a problems for some years now.
 

av8r

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No there isn’t.

can you give us the total number impacted, Scotty?
The only entity that knows for sure is Toyota and they're not telling, but there have been more than a dozen so far mentioned on 4 different platforms where the trans had to be replaced. If you extrapolate that out to include all those that don't post on forums we can safely assume the number is much higher. That's a lot for a new truck that's supposed to be one of the most reliable vehicles ever produced.

No idea who "scotty" is, but I'll assume it was a poor attempt at mocking me. Try harder.
 
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fostuhh

fostuhh

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@fostuhh I hope it gets resolved well. I can't imaging going from a Golf R to a Tacoma but our pickup purchase was for a work oriented vehicle and leaves us with a manual transmission last ever Alltrack.

My best tip for any sort of service is handle it all as cheery as possible even if you don't feel that way inside. It gets you the most out of someone you have to depend on. Good luck!



You're supposed to vary speed vs not use cruise control, avoid hard braking, not tow, and avoid hard acceleration at first. Still keep at the modest and varied use up to 1000 miles.



Can you support that with evidence? Well more than 100,000 have shipped now. The dealer service staff we usually go to close to home and where we bought the pickup 44 mi away both say nothing is standing out as problematic or much different than other new and recent models as can happen.

My biggest fear with any warranty claim would be same with all brands. Parts shortages have been a problems for some years now.
Definitely a big change from the R, that's for sure. Just time to get into something bigger, with a house and kids soon enough. Love VW's though, I had a GTI and then the R, my Fiancee has owned 3 GTIs and now an Atlas CrossSport.
 

TalkingTaco444

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The only entity that knows for sure is Toyota and they're not telling, but there have been more than a dozen so far mentioned on 4 different platforms where the trans had to be replaced. If you extrapolate that out to include all those that don't post on forums we can safely assume the number is much higher. That's a lot for a new truck that's supposed to be one of the most reliable vehicles ever produced.

No idea who "scotty" is, but I'll assume it was a poor attempt at mocking me. Try harder.
1. So… you don’t actually have any idea what the number is and you said it’s a lot anyway? Kinda odd

2. there haven’t been more then a dozen. Feel free to link them. There’s actual sourcing below from Toyota on the topic. But anyway… assuming it is a dozen, are you saying a dozen out of 70k is too high? there have been 70,000 trucks sold. Just how many do you think may have an issue? Are you really under the impression any vehicle ever created has had a 100% success rate?

3.idk.. others seemed to get the joke. It was a joke. Not a mocking attempt.

Seems like you should watch the below if you’re serious about figuring out if this is real or not.

 

Gfenza89

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Dam that sucks, my trans seems to shift fine for the most part
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