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Shock top hat failure on our stock 2024 Tacoma Off-Road while offroading

Taconatron

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You said 80,000 trucks and 2 failures. I pointed out that not all 80,000 owners post on the various Tacoma forums therefore you don't know if there are more failures that are not being documented on internet forums.

All I was saying is you don't know that only 2 trucks out of 80,000 have the shock issue. Many owners (most) don't even know or care forums exist. If they did these forums would have 80,000 registered users...they don't. Those same owners (that don't post on forums at all ever) could have the problem and we would be none the wiser. That is not my opinion that is common sense.

I wasn't trying to change your opinion, I was pointing out the fact that your data (80,000 with 2 failures) has no basis in fact.
You’re not wrong but the forums and Facebook pages are a good insight. There are thousands across each media. If you’re only seeing a few out of thousands then that’s an indicator that this is not wide spread. Not a fact but a good sample size to make assumptions.
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av8r

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Toyota is advertising these trucks, mostly the TRD pro, as being able to bomb through the desert and take jumps. It's the first thing you see when you click on the Tacoma overview page on their website. They also highlight the bilsteins in the TRD OR as being "Co-engineered with Bilstein®, * Tacoma TRD Off-Road comes equipped with the most extreme suspension setup in its history." That may be the case but they obviously didn't upgrade the top hats as well. I have to imagine the Pro and TH have been beefed up in that area.

Aluminum, and especially thin cast aluminum is susceptible to fatigue failure, which is repeated low stress over time. Steel is not nearly as susceptible to this. You may blame user error but I see weakness and something I would have to worry about if going far off the pavement. Know that every time you inadvertently bottom out your front suspension, the full force is being absorbed by a few square inches of thin aluminum.
They're selling the sizzle knowing full well 99.9% of owners will never even go off road. They know their demographic better than they know themselves.
 

TacoFreak

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I don't see how that can hurt anything @tacofomo and that top hat design obviously needs something done to make it stronger. Even if that is rare, IMO that should never happen under any circumstances. Toyota needs to address that, maybe with a recall, or at least a service campaign.

@av8r I can't agree that Tacoma buyers don't know what they want from their trucks and I see a lot more than 0.1% out on the trails. Tacomas are legendary for their off road prowess and durability and exploding top hats don't cut it.
 

taco4moro

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I don't see how that can hurt anything @tacofomo and that top hat design obviously needs something done to make it stronger. Even if that is rare, IMO that should never happen under any circumstances. Toyota needs to address that, maybe with a recall, or at least a service campaign.

@av8r I can't agree that Tacoma buyers don't know what they want from their trucks and I see a lot more than 0.1% out on the trails. Tacomas are legendary for their off road prowess and durability and exploding top hats don't cut it.
Yeah for how often I'm out on trails I don't mind sticking a temporary band aid on for peace of mind. Even though if a failure were to happen and it would be covered under warranty, I would rather not go through the hassle and inconvenience just for them to replace it with the same part.
 

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tacogarage

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I am adding this to the
Yeah for how often I'm out on trails I don't mind sticking a temporary band aid on for peace of mind. Even though if a failure were to happen and it would be covered under warranty, I would rather not go through the hassle and inconvenience just for them to replace it with the same part.
Not only that, last time we checked those we're backordered so if you take the truck in, THEY WILL KEEP IT until they can get the parts you'll possibly get a rental but your truck stays at the dealer.
We needed our for R&D so we were unable to leave it but we came up with a solution and we had to make adaptations to make our broken one work but we've since installed a few of these and everything looks good so far....

https://thetacogarage.com/products/...er-with-1-lift-for-4th-gen-toyota-tacoma-2024

2EF99A58-D743-4163-B877-D98142FB9AB1.jpg
 
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hemlockz

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I am adding this to the

Not only that, last time we checked those we're backordered so if you take the truck in, THEY WILL KEEP IT until they can get the parts you'll possibly get a rental but your truck stays at the dealer.
We needed our for R&D so we were unable to leave it but we came up with a solution and we had to make adaptations to make our broken one work but we've since installed a few of these and everything looks good so far....

https://thetacogarage.com/products/...er-with-1-lift-for-4th-gen-toyota-tacoma-2024

2EF99A58-D743-4163-B877-D98142FB9AB1.jpg
Looks good. How thick is it then? Doesn't really look like an inch to my eye, but maybe its the camera angle playing tricks...

(edit: yeah, i guess you double the thickness to calculate lift so if thats half inch it raises an inch)

Do you leave the broken piece under it, or remove it completely?
 
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tacogarage

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Looks good. How thick is it then? Doesn't really look like an inch to my eye, but maybe its the camera angle playing tricks...

(edit: yeah, i guess you double the thickness to calculate lift so if thats half inch it raises an inch)

Do you leave the broken piece under it, or remove it completely?
These are actually about a 1/4" thick at the base, but they yield about 1" of lift, we were surprised about that ratio but we've installed these on a few trucks now and yes, its approximately 1"

We lost the broken piece at the desert so on OUR truck we had to do some extra work to fix it.
NORMALLY, these will sit on top of the piece that breaks, preventing it from breaking at all.
 
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TacoFreak

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NORMALLY, these will sit on top of the piece that breaks, preventing it from breaking at all.
That would be ideal. Toyota should be embarrassed, and should produce a fix, but I wouldn't chance it by waiting for it to break.

A nice solution which has the added benefit of looking good too.
 

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Schutt hockey

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We went out with the new taco to try and see what it was capable of in stock configuration and I have to say, for the most part, it was great! We didn’t do anything crazy but we did test traction, comfort and clearance pretty well (although we didn’t record it all)

We tried not to beat up the truck too much but the truck did end up breaking…

E1E2E9A7-74ED-40F7-980A-7CFE2B6A5B63.jpeg
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On our way back we picked up some speed on a flat area of the desert, and without hitting any jumps, rocks, or washboard one of the top hats of out right shock managed to come apart.

These new tacos have no frame mounted bump stops like the 2nd and 3rd Gens. Instead, the shock has an “integrated” bump stop that is simply a piece of foam that bumps the shock body to the shock mount or “top hat” when at full compression.

Our only conclusion is that fatigue or a hard enough hit was able to crack the top hat, a cap holding the bushing for the shock shaft came out and the shaft was able to completely go through the hat. We were unable to locate the cap so we are unsure if the cap broke or simply slipped out after the hat cracked.

In any case the cap was being held in place only by a groove on the hat that might have about 3/32” engagement with the cap, both aluminum parts. The hat seems to be formed over what seems to be a cast cap.

A7B26E27-1E3D-4CF1-B66E-C9920FE48838.jpeg
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Needless to say, I believe the cap is not enough to take the force a bump stop normally would. I am not exaggerating when I say we DIDN’T HIT anything that would have caused a hard bottoming of the truck.

THIS IS THE 10TH TACOMA I’ve owned and we’ve hit significantly worse things on old stock shocks, without a break. Pot holes on a regular street would have been much worse than anything we did on this run. We’ve worked on hundreds if not thousands of tacos at this point and we’ve yet to see a shock mount break. Mostly because all other tacos did have a frame mounted bump stop I would assume, but that’s exactly the point, if you’re going to make “off road” shocks and integrate the bump stop, the hats better be able to take an impact. These don’t seem to be able to do that. I could be wrong and this could be a fluke but the way it is designed seems to me like a weak point that will hardly be able to take a good impact without a redesign.

We have a clip on this video of where this happened, you can see we picked up some speed but there’s no obvious exact point where this would have happened, like I said, we didn’t hit any crazy terrain while taking that shot.

My 24 Taco failed exactly the same except my kid was driving it on a state highway. This is a design failure. The strut mount and top hat are not robust enough, subbing cast aluminum for steel in this design. It is ultimately a safety issue as catastrophic failure can and does occur under ordinary driving conditions for a critical component of the suspension and vehicle control system.
 

n118nw

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TacoFreak

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@Schutt hockey Yeah - clearly this is a serious problem and Toyota should probably do a recall to address that. A complaint to NHTSA would help get this to the point where they have to come up with a fix.

In the meantime I would do something like @n118nw and @32spoke suggested, just to be safe.
 

Eddiefelixjr

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Anybody know how long they are taking to fix this issue i had the same problem one day after buying mine. Top hat broke less than 200 miles (n)

20240831_110024.jpg
 

TacoFreak

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Does anyone know if the Icon top hat reinforcement plates fit on a Pro - or if they are needed?
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