2024 Tacoma TRD Pro Full Transmission Replacement After 342 Miles

[Taco Azul]

It’s almost funny how before the Tacoma came out everyone was fussing about the engine. But now I don’t think I’ve heard of a single engine failure yet, but pretty much everything between the engine and the wheels has failed for various people.

I’m knocking on wood for my TH. My biggest concern is getting deep into some backcountry trail and having a failure. But it seems like most of the broken trucks could at least limp along for a while.

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[TacoFreak]

My biggest concern is getting deep into some backcountry trail and having a failure. But it seems like most of the broken trucks could at least limp along for a while.

Yeah - Toyota really needs to get this stuff under control. A lot of us bought Land Cruisers and Tacomas because they could go almost anywhere and never let us down.

Seeing your concern makes it clear just how much this has changed. And it isn't just the fancy tech, it is basic stuff like suspension and drivetrain which Toyota nailed a very long time ago.

 

[Miqie]

A brand new vehicle, I can expect some minor problems, maybe. But a complete transmission replacement? No way I'm accepting that on a $50,000 plus vehicle. Cancel the contract and refund my money. I'll go home, regroup, and maybe come back in 2025 when they got these things figured out.

 

[NoNo]

It sucks for those who have to deal with these issues but if there were 100 trucks that had these transmission issues, it would still be an insignificant percentage of the vehicles sold so far. Social media exaggerates this stuff so much. Every person that has an issue immediately jumps on FB, a forum, Twitter, whatever to complain. Not saying that's wrong, but in the past we'd never even know about these issues unless there were hundreds or thousands of vehicles with the same issue.

 

[TacoFreak]

..., but in the past we'd never even know about these issues unless there were hundreds or thousands of vehicles with the same issue.

Exactly. It wasn't until there was a recall that most people even knew that some vehicles were having these issues. Now when there are even a few issues it is all over the internet.

I'm still glad owners like @fostuhh post so that we are aware of possible issues, and how they get resolved.

 

[TurboTruck!]

A brand new vehicle, I can expect some minor problems, maybe. But a complete transmission replacement? No way I'm accepting that on a $50,000 plus vehicle. Cancel the contract and refund my money. I'll go home, regroup, and maybe come back in 2025 when they got these things figured out.

At that low of mileage and right off the lot I agree but with these rare models and waiting periods it’s a difficult decision. I know there were like 14 different 24 Tacomas/4 MT SRs on the lot when I went back for water dripping issue. If I had a similar situation right off the bat with low miles like The OP I would be asking for a new truck. But my replacement truck would have been sitting on the lot. It’s just a difficult situation. And these thing’s broken far far from home is not good for anyone that gets unlucky. All we can do is advise reassuring that things will all work out. Ups and downs highs and low’s mountain tops deepest valley’s life itself fluctuating.

 

[Armyn21]

sucks to hear this.. fingers crossed i have 10800 miles on mine and i tow a 7x12 trailer mostly..

 

[TacoFreak]

I agree @TurboTruck! If I passed up my TRD Pro allocation or gave it back it could be years until I could get another one.

I would be disappointed if an expensive new truck needed a transmission replaced, but not to the point of returning it, even if I could. A transmission swap is really a pretty easy repair with very little R&R, so unless you got another bad transmission I don't see a problem.

 

[TurboTruck!]

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.

I’m your huckleberry.

 

[fostuhh]

Exactly. It wasn't until there was a recall that most people even knew that some vehicles were having these issues. Now when there are even a few issues it is all over the internet.

I'm still glad owners like @fostuhh post so that we are aware of possible issues, and how they get resolved.

It ain't much but it's honest work

 

[Jcisco951]

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.

The truck was in Automatic Cruise Control, heading up the 5 freeway in CA. I had it set to around 75mph 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. The truck began to accelerate on it’s own 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, which by far had to be one of the worst Service experiences I have ever had. The advisor I had gotten, had no idea what the vehicle was, couldn’t understand that we were out of state and bought the truck at a different dealership and seemed to have 0 urgency or empathy for the situation. After about 2 hours I get a call to come back to him where he 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 and contacted the purchasing dealer 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.

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.

Purchased a 2024 TRD pro at a nor cal dealer last week. 25mi into my drive home the truck started shaking violently. Had the truck towed to my local dealer. Turns out the U joints failed and the driveshaft was significantly damaged. I was provided a rental and now waiting for a resolution. Parts not available for awhile.

caution to those in the market.

5000 miles and my trd sport auto transmission went out. Gears 1-5 don’t engage. It really sucks how Toyota let this happen. I’ve seen online to many 4th gen Tacomas with transmission issues. The dealer my truck is at has 2 with the same problem. I need a whole new transmission and converter. Smh

 

[TurboTruck!]

5000 miles and my trd sport auto transmission went out. Gears 1-5 don’t engage. It really sucks how Toyota let this happen. I’ve seen online to many 4th gen Tacomas with transmission issues. The dealer my truck is at has 2 with the same problem. I need a whole new transmission and converter. Smh

I sincerely believe the OP but you and your disappointment pal I question the authenticity of your posts. If I am mistaken I apologize.

 

[JBSwine]

It sucks for those who have to deal with these issues but if there were 100 trucks that had these transmission issues, it would still be an insignificant percentage of the vehicles sold so far. Social media exaggerates this stuff so much. Every person that has an issue immediately jumps on FB, a forum, Twitter, whatever to complain. Not saying that's wrong, but in the past we'd never even know about these issues unless there were hundreds or thousands of vehicles with the same issue.

it is funny how statistics work and what the acceptable failure rate that manufactures have.

 

[goin2drt]

It sucks for those who have to deal with these issues but if there were 100 trucks that had these transmission issues, it would still be an insignificant percentage of the vehicles sold so far. Social media exaggerates this stuff so much. Every person that has an issue immediately jumps on FB, a forum, Twitter, whatever to complain. Not saying that's wrong, but in the past we'd never even know about these issues unless there were hundreds or thousands of vehicles with the same issue.

It sucks no doubt but you are correct. You can literally go on any forum, for any car/truck and see the same thing. New models just have issues. People honestly should not be all that surprised by now with social media and knowing what happens to first year cars. yet they still buy them to be the first and they are still surprised when it happens. I had a first model JL Wrangler. Go on those forums and search 2018 JL. WAAAAAAYYYYY worse that what we have here. Yet my dumba$$ still bought the first model Tacoma. I get what I get and won't throw a fit. I knew what I was getting into.

 

[av8r]

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

"It's on the internet so it must be true"

lulz

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