Toyota built its reputation over several decades as a manufacturer known for its reliable powertrains. Remember, this is the maker of the notoriously hard-to-kill Hilux and Land Cruiser. Now owners and prospective buyers might think a little differently though after Toyota decided on July 25 to replace 102,092 engines in Tundras and Lexus LX SUVs from 2022 and 2023. Here’s how these vehicles, marketed as rugged and ready for action, ended up needing new hearts.
Toyota issued a recall back in early June. At the time, the company simply said that the aforementioned trucks and SUVs might have debris inside of their V35A engines. The V35A engine, by the way, is the new 3.4-liter twin-turbo V6 that replaced the rugged 5.7-liter V8. The recall included 98,568 Tundras and 3,524 Lexus LX600s.
Toyota says the debris was likely introduced into the engines during the machining process, and that the company altered its machining process to one that “better clear[s] machining debris.” Toyota doesn’t state how many vehicles in the recall population actually suffered from significant loose debris, so it’s hard to know the rate of failure at this time.
Notably, other Toyota products like the Sequoia Hybrid, Lexus LS, and GX550 also use a version of the V35A engine but are absent from the recall. Toyota describes why below::
This recall covers vehicles equipped with V35A engines of a particular configuration that were manufactured during a certain period at particular engine plants. V35A engines of this configuration, manufactured after this production period, were manufactured with new or improved processes that better clear machining debris. Other Toyota or Lexus vehicles sold in the U.S. are not equipped with this engine or have a different V35A engine configuration with different pressure on the main bearings. Some of these vehicles equipped with a different engine configuration have a Hybrid powertrain system. If engine failure occurs on a Hybrid vehicle, the vehicle continues to have some motive power for limited distances and the driver receives a continuous audible warning, warning lamps, and visual warning messages. Toyota is unable to estimate the percentage of the involved vehicles to actually contain the defect described in Section 5.
The problem popped up back in March of 2022, says Toyota in official documents filed with NHTSA. “In early March 2022, Toyota received a field report that indicated a vehicle equipped with a V35A engine stalled. Toyota recovered the involved parts and performed an investigation of the engine failure. Through this investigation, it was found that the crankshaft main bearings had seized,” it said.
A few months went by before a single dealer reported two more similar instances in July. The manufacturer recovered the engines in question and found that they both had crankshaft and main bearing damage. Concerned that machining debris had entered the engine during production, Toyota says it changed its process right away. But that was too late for many vehicles. In its NHTSA filing, Toyota describes what owners might experience. “In the involved vehicles, this [issue] can lead to potential engine knocking, engine rough running, engine no start and/or a loss of motive power.”
By September of 2023, Toyota says it “observed an increase in dealer and Toyota field reports related to engine failure involving debris.” In October of 2023, one report popped on Reddit where the owner claimed the following.
Bought my 2023 Tundra at Beaman Toyota (Nashville) in February. Put 10k miles on it literally on the way to dealership to check out a knocking noise.
Left truck for a diagnostic check, received a call from the service manager and he said the whole engine needs to be replaced!
New short blocks, peds, every component that oil touches. Some type of internal engine failure happening on these engines. It has happened on a few other trucks. Third one that they have had at my local dealership.
I’m pretty upset because this is my dream truck and all I have been told is Toyota is the most reliable truck on the road. Anyone else having the same issue?
Boy oh boy were other people having the same or similar issues. On NHTSA’s website owners and service techs can report problems; there are several public records related to engine issues with the Tundra, and several indicate that owners heard a tapping noise or that the engine just stalled out altogether. Here are just a few complaints.
“My engine had something internally brake on Easter Sunday 2024. When I first took it to the dealer on Monday, it took a day or two and they found nothing wrong. I picked it up and noticed a loud tapping noise coming from the engine, I took it back to the dealer, the technician opened up the motor and found metal shavings all over the inside of the motor.”
“The contact stated while driving approximately 70 MPH, the instrument panel fluttered, and the vehicle stalled. The vehicle was not able to be restarted. The vehicle was towed to a dealer where it was diagnosed that the engine needed to be replaced.”
I was traveling south on [XXX] in Sarasota, FL, around 70-75 miles per hour and the engine shut down with warning. I coasted to a stop and was able to pull in the left emergency lane out of traffic. This could have been a tragic situation because cars were traveling 70 plus mph in that area. I tried to restart the car but all I got was a clicking sound from the starter, I also smelled a faint burning smell form the engine compartment. I had to have the vehicle towed into a local Toyota dealership and was advised several days later that the engine would have to be replaced as metal shavings were found inside of it.
By May 23, 2024, Toyota decided to conduct the recall. It now has over 800 reports of engine failure that could be linked to this debris situation.
To figure out what was wrong, Toyota gathered good engines from the field along with swatches of debris samples from specific production intervals. “These samples represented the size and amount of debris present for production periods, or lots, of engines,” says Toyota. It even went as far as to send bearings and other parts back to Japan so that the engine design team could study them.
Ultimately all of this data and the findings of this investigation led to the recall. Toyota does not indicate what other potential remedies it considered instead of a complete engine replacement, but clearly it felt that this was the more economically efficient route. That says a lot.
Automakers don’t replace entire engines as part of a recall very often. They especially don’t do it across 100,000+ vehicles with any sort of regularity. In the vast majority of cases, the manufacturer simply fixes the part or parts associated with the potential risk or defect.
Still, it’s a statement that it’ll do what it must to make things right after a production defect. Maybe the E60 M5 and E90 M3 wouldn’t have the reputation it does had BMW recalled them for for consistent bearing failure, too.
Toyotas being especially reliable has been nothing more than marketing for some 20 years… They use old tech, and it’s simpler and proven, sure. That means drum brakes and other things you don’t want on a modern car though. The attosecond they break out of that (twin turbo anything), they’re not even in the top ten.
Yes. Our 2019 Toyota Highlander was bulletproof with its ancient platform and tried-and-true 3.5 V6. But it lacked so many amenities that others in the class had come with for years.
I mean, “using older, proven technology” is literally HOW you stay reliable, marketing or no
As the resident Toyota nutcase, let me throw in my 2 cents.
Yeah, its a bummer that new trucks will no longer be factory fresh and the quality of the work is very much going to depend on the shop that does the job and the quality of the techs. Most of the issues with my Land Cruiser aren’t because of Toyota, but because of mine or others work on it over the years. Being extremely fastidious is going to be the name of the game with these replacements. Exact procedures, exact specs and no shortcuts to “beat the book”.
I would be pretty upset especially if I had an LX600, as part of the value of buying an LX is knowing it was build in a flagship plant using top tier labor in Japan. knowing that the final assembly wasn’t at Tahara Japan, but instead done by Brody at Lexus of greater Omaha is less appealing. Brody could do just as good of job as Japan, or he could rip through it to get to more profitable work and I wont know which it is.
That said, I’d be much happier with this fix compared to a bandaid.
The last thing I will say is that I think Toyota has known the why for some time as other batches of engines aren’t likely to have the problem, meaning they knew the issue and fixed it. I know GX 550 production was slightly delayed because of some issue and this was likely it. Nor does it affect the newest Tundra and LX models.
Toytoa made a mistake. We get it. But more importantly, they acted like proper stewards of the stalwart brand and did the right thing by recalling the engines. Toyota is very much standing behind their product, and despite the inconvenience to the affected Tundra owners, this gesture demonstrates that they want to make things right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyI4ujjxxuk&t=2091s
Car Care Nut on Youtube had a great breakdown of the situation and called the complete engine replacement well before it was announced. The video was made before the nature of the problem was fully understood and released in the press.
Fast forward to the end for his explanation as to why a full engine replacement was the best route.
TLDW, Toyota doesn’t sell just blocks(where the problem lives) as a separate SKU. They list but have never sold them, only full engines. Also, less complicated for a dealer to replace an engine than tear one apart.
P.S. I too am an advocate for simpler engines for reliability reasons. I have only ever owned one turbocharged engine (Volvo). This issue with the Twin-Turbo V6 has NOTHING to do with the turbos. Machining debris clogging oil passages would have caused a failure in any engine, of any configuration.
I mean it’s good that Toyota is fixing the problem. But now they have another problem. My new truck is no longer new. It’s been ripped apart and put back together which is very different than being put together on the assembly line. I’d be so pissed.
The truck is still new, also you get a full warranty with the new engine.
New Parts =/= New Truck. A new truck is one that rolls off the assembly line. Taking out the engine and putting a new one is a completely different process than the way it got made.
I don’t think people realize how much failsafing, data collection, etc go into building engines or vehicles. I’d much prefer to keep the original engine if possible.
I would be on the new engine is new bandwagon, save that the dealership monkeys putting it in are not going to adhere to torque specs, bang things around, etc. I’ve NEVER had even a neutral dealership service experience…
noone really gives a damn about a numbers matching tundra.
That’s not my point. My point is the engine went in on an assembly line, with one process. Now it’s coming out of the truck at thousands of disparate dealerships where things will deviate from the prescribed procedure and lead to other issues. It’s not a new truck anymore if it’s not put together the same.
I feel for you. It will effect the resale value of your Tundra for years.
I don’t own one. I’m just pointing out it’s a major major service to a brand new vehicle.
Just ask the thousands of former Tacoma owners who had the frame replaced. I still see frames stacked up next to a local dealer, still an ongoing process to fix all impacted trucks. The guy I knew who had his frame replaced had to revisit the dealer a few times to address issues, had to deal with the dealer trying to refuse some repairs stating that they didn’t cause the new problem when they took the car apart and installed the new frame. But, that same person went on to buy another Tacoma, just before they moved to the latest generation because they figured everything had been sorted out by the final model year.
Is it just me or are there a lot of new car failure points and recalls now? Maybe they’re just reported on more than they used to be. But, sometimes, I’m inclined to believe that increased pressure from bean counters to cut costs is ending up costing more in the end when it comes to recalls and quality losses such as this. Look at Kia/Hyundai. Bet they wish the Theta II had been investigated a little better. At least Toyota is catching this early, I guess.
Covid pandemic has to be the root cause of some of this. Disruptive to organizations from engineering design down to the production line. We’ll see more issues from all the mfgrs.
It’s a combination of bean counters and better CAD/modelling/CNC/etc. The engineers can design closer to the minimum tolerance easier now, and since it is cheaper, they do.
Complete engine replacement may sound like the nuclear option here, but it’s actually the only sensible fix. Circulating metal shavings through an engine’s oiling system is a surefire way to destroy the entire thing from the inside out. Once you spot that forbidden glitter in the oil pan, the only guaranteed way to avoid the ensuing failure is to totally rebuild or replace the long block (and turbos, if they use bearings that are fed by the engine oil). With this engine still being in production, replacements are going to be a lot more economical for Toyota labor-wise than rebuilds.
That one reddit guy drove literally 10,000 miles to the dealer? He couldn’t find a closer one?
yea, it didn’t make any sense when I read that too.
I read it to mean the odo rolled over 10k on the way to the dealer.
They should just blame the tires and move on. Or maybe just LS swap them all.
Full engine replacement is like winning the lottery. My spouse’s 2013 Optima was part of the 2.0T engine failure deal, where Kia/Hyundai said that if your engine fails at any point, you get a new one. 9 years and 125000km later, brand new engine! Now it’s at 170k with zero rust on it, so it’ll continue on for many more years.
Not if you you have less than 10K miles! Nothing like having a brand new thing, you just purchased for $50,000+ dollars ripped apart.
Yeah, that would definitely suck.
My buddy has had one engine rebuild (new heads) followed by one complete engine replacement on his F150 5.0 V8. Both times the cab was removed to facilitate the work. And amazingly everything looks and works properly. The Ford dealer said this is so common the techs get quite good at it.
I think modern trucks have a lot of cab-off repair procedures. I imagine it’s much easier than trying to wedge tools into crevices and around corners if you have the facility to do it.
That said, if you’re paying out of pocket it’s still stupid expensive. I have a very minor oil leak in my truck, and when I had it looked at they quoted something like $4000 to replace the seal. Cab off repair of course. I stuck a mat under the leak so it doesn’t mess up the garage and otherwise I’m ignoring it unless it gets significantly worse.
I had a new engine replacement for my 17 Escape 2.0 at 54k. Had to take back next day due to ‘clang’ of brake shield when turning wheel in parking lot. Turns out they didn’t seat the front shafts/bearings properly or something. New half shaft/rotors/pads on front. Definitely nervous for months after that and was considering if needed to trade it off.
Happy Ford replaced it, but was not happy to have my newer car totally disassembled. I keep my cars for a long time.
I thought so, too, when Subaru replaced our ‘12 Forester engine block at 90K as part of a recall for burning oil (for years). Now we have a newish, 6 y.o. block with about 60K on it. And it burns oil.
Damn,this is a big one. I almost feel sorry for them.I definitely feel sorry for the mechanics.
At least it’ll get easier with practice,haha
When Toyota had the frame recalls on the Tacomas, Techs LOVED that, because they got very efficient at replacing the frame and the job paid really good. I sense this will be similar
Oh no, guaranteed work! The horror!
Flat rate is the real killer. This is why I’ve loved sticking to truck & coach where it’s all hourly.
I was about halfway through the article when “E90 M3” came into my mind. BMW could definitely learn a thing or two about customer service from Toyota. (I suppose that’s pretty obvious to most people who frequent this site.)
Being in the commercial construction industry my company has to interview product manufacturers about representing them. Our biggest ally is their customers, which we typically find on our own and then interview them. What is the overall quality of their product? How nice are they to deal with during their part of the project? Does their product perform for the lifespan they claim?
The biggest judge we use is this…everyone screws up. What do they do to fix it? Do they try a repair they aren’t sure will work or do they do what is above and beyond and make their reputation beyond reproach? This is what Toyota did with this recall. The infrastructure requirements to build 100,000+ engines with regular car production is amazing. Whoever made this decision just made the biggest decision of their life.
Can any of us here say that we just spent a billion dollars of someone else’s money? I can’t.
As a former Kia Soul owner I approve Toyota’s handling of this issue. They identified an engine issue, figured out what vehicles are affected, and are replacing the engines in affected vehicles.
When my Soul threw a rod it was like I was playing high-stakes poker with them. Are you the original owner since purchase? Luckily I was. I witnessed another Soul owner with the same issue turned away because he was not the original owner.
Still had to play games as the engine was not a part of any official recall or class-action. The class-action judgement came later.
“Those are rookie numbers LOL!!”
-Hyundai, with millions of engine replacements of every generation over the past 20 years
LOL. I just posted my Kia story.
102,092 x $10,000 (guess??) = $1,020,920,000
A billion dollars. damn.
It’ll be a lot less than $10k to swap out the engine.
Depends on the motor. I would gander this motor is at least this much.
The engine in my car is $23k (what they charge you for it) and like $7k in labor.
Exactly. It’s insane numbers.
What engine?
Audi turbo 6. And desperate people will actually pay that instead of finding a used motor and having an indie install it.
They won’t be paying retail to themselves, or the dealership techs and may be back charging suppliers.
Sucks for Toyota, but can we please get rid of that autoplaying video? I know subscribers probably get a clean ad-free experience but this is going to drive new readers away. Autoplaying videos in floating windows are one of the most annoying ad tactics ever known to humanity.
Alas, as a (cheap) subscriber I too see the potatos
Expensive but worth it. The owners of those trucks won’t be left wondering if theirs is going to explode a mile out of warranty.
This is extremely costly, but also extremely valuable PR. Imagine being completely outside of any news cycle relating to cars and all of a sudden you get a letter saying something like:
We’re contacting all owners of XYZ to inform them we’ve found 0.8% of the engines used in your vehicle had machining debris, to make sure nothing happens to your vehicle we’d like you to schedule an appointment to have your engine replaced. Your powertrain warranty will reset and you will be provided a loaner vehicle.
If they did something like that, that would just elevate the cult of Toyota to another level.
I’d bet the defect rate was closer to ten times that or more for them to recall all the engines. Modern machining is remarkably consistent, and so is the mechanized cleaning that follows. Someone screwed up very badly during the review of processes for certain versions of this engine.
Well, this at least somewhat vindicates a good friend who bought a used V8 Tundra over a new turbo V6 Tundra. My friend has a friend who works at the local Toyota dealership, and was warned back in 2022 to skip the new Tundra that he was on the wait-list for and buy a lightly used V8 model. Apparently, as the new trucks were being delivered the dealership was seeing all sorts of issues with the new turbo V6, and not the typical teething issues new models usually see. I admit that I was a bit skeptical about the information my friend received, but it would seem the dealer friend was actually being a friend and not just trying to boost used car sales.
Man if even Toyota can’t get it right I’m not exactly enthused over the future prospects of our current “turbo everything” approach to ICE. I’m not one of those THERE’S NO REPLACEMENT FOR DISPLACEMENT types but I’ve consistently questioned whether or not there are actual environmental benefits to boosted engines in the long run.
They reduce emissions only marginally in the present and don’t offer real world fuel economy benefits outside of highway driving. They’re as inefficient as any NA engine in city driving. Ask me how I know….and if the cars don’t last as long or you have to do a mass engine replacement like this what are the benefits? Manufacturing the actual cars and powertrains is super carbon intensive.
I’m not an engineer or environmental expert but I’ve been saying all along that the move to higher strung smaller engines will probably wind up being a wash as far as their carbon footprint is concerned long term…and as of now that’s exactly how it seems to be playing out. Between forcing engines to be smaller and less reliable and trying to force feed everyone EVs as the singular solution before they were ready it sure looks like two of our first moves towards decarbonizing passenger vehicles were mediocre at best.
This has nothing to do with it being a turbo engine. It was a bad manufacturing process that they have since fixed. It’s almost like you didn’t read the article.
Did you read any of the article? The issue is due to poor management of cleanliness during machining operations
I like normally aspirated engines as much as anybody else, but surely using exhaust gases, which are otherwise wasted completely, to drive a turbine to increase the engine performance, sounds like an efficiency increase?
In theory, always. In practice it seems like the increased pumping losses and richer mix under load can make it a wash or worse. When I went truck shopping a few years ago it seemed like overall the turbos did better with no load but towing the NA V8s pulled ahead.
You know, if automakers want to stay ICE and reduce fuel consumption and emissions, they’d really be better off with a more efficient transmission. Good thing the Jatco Xtronic CVT is efficient, along with being smoother than a clunky, archaic torque converter automatic. Maybe Toyota should have thought of that before making these unreliable Tundras.
I dunno, I suspect if all ICE cars made a constant speed engine drone when accelerating people would be happier to switch EVs.
I was lead design engineer on a turbo-downsized engine. Turbo-downsizing works as an emissions strategy because of the emissions drive cycle it’s tested on. It’s optimised to reduce emissions on that cycle. Turbo-downsized engines can provide improved economy in all environments, if they are driven in a way that allows that. The problem with the “real world” economy is that drivers either don’t care or don’t know how to maximise economy, or, potentially, aren’t willing to hold up traffic to save money. I sympathise, I can get 47mpg out of my 86, but I choose to drive it so I get 34mpg. I don’t even work out the economy of my turbo car, because I drive that like a bastard.
Had the WLTP or whatever been configured differently, we’d have a different set of technical solutions.
Given the test we have my preference would be turbo-downsizing but with default “eco” modes limiting vehicle performance down to WLTP levels. People would then complain the cars were slow rather than thirsty.
I remember some people grumbling about the switch to TTV6s in the new trucks. They were saying stuff like, Mark my words, the reliability will suffer when switching from a proven V8 configuration. 100,000 recalled engines later and it sounds like they were right.
Did you read the article? It was a manufacturing error that had nothing to do with the turbo.
That has been said about every switch to every new engine with every new technology. Every single day, I can say, mark my words, it’s gonna rain tomorrow. And sooner or later, I’ll be right.
Toyota has screwed up before, and will again.
They try and fix things though, like the these engines and the previous Frame issues.
That’s what makes them better than most others.
Much maligned FCA did a very similar thing for me (although they did an oil analysis and only replaced engines with actual bearing damage). They also extended the powertrain warranty to 10/100.
I had a coworker with one of the frame-recalled Tacomas. We shared a cubicle wall and I remember the day I heard him answer the phone and shout “What?!” in response to the news that while the Toyota dealership was doing the inspection on the frame for the recall the truck folded in half on the lift. Despite my coworker’s efforts and yearly fluid film applications, the inside of the frame was gone. The dealer called Toyota and they agreed to buy the totalled truck for above market value and my coworker drove home in a brand new Tacoma that afternoon. I’m sure any other brand would have tried to weasel out of responsibility for a rusty 10 year old truck, but Toyota impressed me with that response.
I would have loved to be a fly on the wall listening to that conversation.
Honestly, it was less dramatic than you might think. There was some definite tension and anger at first, but by the time he hung up and walked around our shared cube wall to tell me what happened, he was pretty calm. He had already been thinking about buying a new truck, so the issue fixed the problem of selling the truck and trying to get market value for it. Once he realized an hour or so later that he would also be saving money on sales tax because it was considered a trade-in, he was actually pretty happy about the situation.
Can’t blame the tires on this one I guess.
“Making cars is hard”.
On one hand, good on them for making it a recall instead of a special service campaign or whatever.
On the other, this seems to be a long time coming. A grenading engine in an ugly truck will likely hurt sales more than it has.
Then again the cult of Toyota/Lexus will probably forget about it as fast as they did the rust-prone frames of their previous trucks from not long ago.
Nobody has forgotten the rust prone frames.
It’s just that they also remember Toyota’s response to the problem that made them even better off than if the frames hadn’t rusted so badly.
Yes, but there’s still a lot of them that didn’t get covered, and/or the owners didn’t get sufficient notification to have them repaired in the allowed time frame. My store buys probably a Tacoma a month that has a rust-holes frame, but they make for good wholesale auction fodder.
Thats a big sample of engines that need to be replaced but at least they did the right thing (Looking at you 1.5L Ecoboost engine from Ford). They want to keep their good reputation and this is the only way to do it, similar how GM replaced thousands of batteries and installed software to monitor battery conditions on the Chevy Bolt. The car actually increased sales, I replaced my 21 Bolt with a 23 Bolt knowing I had a good backup from GM.