Loved Ones - Toyota

[timswi]

Heresy!

You'll have the Toyota Lovers up in arms.

Well..As a recovering import service manager, I can tell you that they rely on silent recalls..The customer complains about an issue, and we said.."that shouldn't happen"..then we'd fix the issue, with factory approval, free of charge..happened all the time. The customer walked away happy as could be, thinking Wow they really take care of their customers!!

I never liked this approach, but that's the way the business works.

The domestics could never get away with what the imports do on a daily basis. This is why I never trusted the media reports on how superior the imports are.

Do the domestics have issues from time to time?..Sure. But tow trucks also pull stuff into Toyota and Honda garages all day long. You just don't hear about it because the owners think the problem has to be an abnormal/one time problem.

The lights are finally on. Thank God.

 

[NuBota]

*

that is the dumbest thing i ever heard, why would you even say that? chances are, the little "pawl" that actually locks the trans stationary, will just break due to the massive forces for the rolling car and a little mechanical thingie trying to stop it. and say it did work, now the car goes skidding out of control as one or two tires are now unable to turn (roll), there goes your steering on just about any front wheel drive car. now you hit 6 other cars at 60mph, because of your stupid actions. same thing would happen if you applied the parking brake; the wheels lock up and you skid out of control. oooof

Zilch,

In the scenario you mention you have a good point. But the way I understand it, some cases of the acceleration issue happen at low speeds. Once case I saw was a person pulling into their garage and ending up in the living room. At that point, jamming it in park and/or pulling the parking brake might work. Or say you are at speed, coming up on a red light or behind a school bus with no path of avoidance. I would think any method of decelerating, in control or not, is preferable to plowing into a stationary vehicle at 60 mph. Not sure that in those cases it is the "dumbest" thing to do

All I was getting at was that if the car's brakes are loosing against the engine, disengage the tranny any way possible and slow it down any way possible. If the brakes are gone, a parking brake can be applied gradually. I teach the kids how do to this when they are learning to drive.

 

[riptides]

I had a sudden accelerator stick in a US car before. Luck would have it, I was slowing to merge onto a major highway. It was a rental car. As I was applying the brake, it just didn't "feel" right, I was looking at cars and tractor trailers coming, trying to pick my spot. My brain had not yet engaged, but I realized my foot was applying more and more pressure to the brake. At some point it dawned on me that I had a big issue. I slammed the thing in park, it was a great deal of noise at that point, then shut it off. I then thought back on the whole event and realized how lucky I just was. I called up the rental company, yapped at them, told them how dangerous the situation was and told them to come get the car.

My point is, you never know how the vehicle will react, and can only hope you can access and react in a safe matter. If my foot had not already been on the brake, most likely I would have been t-boned.

A lot of people make it sound like it is almost trivial to recover from sudden acceleration, I think not.

 

[patrick_g]

A lot of people make it sound like it is almost trivial to recover from sudden acceleration, I think not.

Not to worry, I strongly suspect that most of the people you think are trivializing the problem either have not actually experienced it to a significant degree (if at all), don't understand how easily this could become life threatening, or are just brandishing their egos. (Why I'd take out my pen knife and skin the grizzly alive not try to roll up in a ball and play dead.)

Lots of comments, some realistic but perhaps misinformed, were made regarding my sudden acceleration event which I described in a post here.

Let me rehash and add to that post and offer a chronological progression of events which should cover some of the comments that were made.

First, let me set up the scenario. I was driving a nearly new (way less than 10,000 miles) diesel powered Dodge Ram 3500 with automatic transmission and 4x4 on cruise control at 65 MPH. For no apparent reason the truck went full throttle or nearly so and began to accelerate. Consider the truck is nearly new and the throttle was not the least bit sticky. It was equipped with an exhaust brake but that is configured to NOT come on if the throttle is advanced past idle ant it was working properly. Here is what I did:

1.There is a cruise control off/on switch (with green LED indicator) located on the steering wheel so I tried to turn the cruise off BUT that had NO EFFECT and the light stayed on indicating the cruise was still powered up.
2.Applying the service brakes (or just taping the pedal lightly) is supposed to disengage the cruise control. I did, it didn't.
3.At this point I applied the brakes quite forcefully to prevent overtaking traffic ahead. They worked BUT were incapable of holding the diesel engine back sufficiently. I was quite capable of applying several hundred pounds of pedal force and likely applied 2-300 BUT the brakes (which were in good condition and not suffering any malfunction) were not capable of holding the engine back and I realized if I tried too long I'd get brake fade. I had previously experienced brake fade with this truck while carrying a large cab over camper and descending down from 11,000+ feet. That is why I got the exhaust brake system installed. Anyway, I had a feel for how long the brakes would last from this previous experience and I was rapidly approaching what I considered to be THE LIMIT of decent braking action so to save some for later I stopped trying since it wasn't a solution to the problem anyway.
4.Appraising the evolving situation I next shut off the key and then hit neutral and when the RPM dropped indicating the engine was off I used a combination of coasting in neutral and coasting in drive and cautiously changed lanes to the right and took an off ramp and successfully stopped at the bottom of the incline at a stop sign.
5.I fully expected that when I restarted the engine I'd get full throttle. I was prepared to sprint and drift till I found a safe place to get off the road and have a look under the hood but when I restarted the engine it idled normally, the throttle worked properly, cruise worked normally, and I never had a bit of trouble of this sort or any any thing remotely resembling this event ever again with this truck and I still own and drive it.

Putting the tranny in neutral and letting the engine overspeed was not a tactic I chose to use as there were other alternatives which were just as effective but carried no risk of hurting the engine.

There was no brake failure. The engine had been slightly warmed over by replacing the injectors with onesw with finer holes and replacing the injector pump with a much higher pressure one. This gave me more HP, more torque, and at the same time a little better fuel economy by getting more complete combustion due to finer fuel plume. This slight hot rodding of the engine had no part in the sudden acceleration event other than helping the engine overpower the brakes. (note this was the last of the 12 valve non computer Cumins engines in the Dodge)

I did not come very close to having an accident but if traffic had been quite heavy it could have gotten quite dicey really fast. Luckily traffic was only moderately heavy and nothing bad happened to anyone.

I was not panicked but probably did get a little adrenaline going to assist me with the steering and brakes with the engine off. The duration of the event from onset with sudden unintended acceleration to starting down the off ramp pretty much in control was just several seconds, probably well under 30 seconds. I credit part of my response to such events to previous experiences such as nearly a thousand hours overcoming all sorts of malfunctions while flying under simulated instrument conditions in a flight simulator (USAF) and a particularly harrowing mountain descent where another of my truck's brakes totally failed, the emergency brake handle and cable came out of the dash in my hand when I gave it a good adrenaline fueled tug, and I ended up jumping out as soon as I got it below 20MPH leaving the driving to a passenger while I jumped in the back of the slide-in camper to get a fire extinguisher to put out the fire in the right rear wheel well from burning hydraulic fluid spilling out due to extreme heat of the failed wheel bearing having melted the rubber thingies in the wheel cylinder.

Maybe someday we should have a thread about harrowing experiences on tractors, and other vehicles or situations. A good title might be "my highest pucker factor experiences" or "my closest calls while operating a machine."

Pat

 

[Bird]

I can't help but be a bit amused by the people who say it's dangerous to turn off the key because then your power brakes are no longer "power" brakes. Many years ago, we had a 1972 Chrysler Town & Country station wagon; big station wagon with a 440 cu. in. engine instead of the mini-van that used the Town & Country designation in recent years. And the power unit went out in downtown Dallas with my wife driving it. When I got home and she told me about it, I took it for a spin to see, and she was right; it took some real effort to push that brake pedal hard enough to stop that Chrysler. I would have bet that she couldn't do it, but she had driven it on home from downtown Dallas. In 1960, I had to "drive" a 1952 International schoolbus being towed part way and pushed part of he way with a dead engine; another one that took some effort to turn the steering wheel and to stand on the brake pedal to stop. In the Fall of 1965, I was driving a 1970 Olds to Denver when I found it hard to turn on a highway curve because it had broken the fan belt to the power steering. And in the Fall of 1991, my almost new 1992 Bounder 40' motorhome threw both fan belts just outside Williamaburg, VA.

So I've had more experience than I wanted with controlling a vehicle that lost power steering and/or power brakes. Yes, it takes some effort, and will startle you at first, but it's just not that big a deal if you know what you're doing.

 

[patrick_g]

I can't help but be a bit amused by the people who say it's dangerous to turn off the key because then your power brakes are no longer "power" brakes. Yes, it takes some effort, and will startle you at first, but it's just not that big a deal if you know what you're doing.

The operant part of the above comment is, "if you know what you're doing" which is not a good bet these days with the majority of drivers who can't back up safely, don't know where their tires are contacting the pavement, can't drive on ice or slick roads worth beans, and in general should lose their lisc until and unless they could pass certain performance minimums. I'd be happy to take any driver's performance test that was reasonable but haven't been required to take an actual driving test for several decades. Sure, I can still git 'er done but I see plenty of drivers who can't. Add in texting and cell phones and it is a dangerous place out there on the highways.

Pat

 

[Bird]

haven't been required to take an actual driving test for several decades

Yep, me, too. I took the written and driving test in Marlow, OK, in early 1956 for my Oklahoma drivers license, the another written and driving test in December 1956 for my Texas drivers license, written test only when I upgraded to a commerical drivers license in 1957 or '58, written test only when I upgraded again to a chauffeur's license in 1959 or '60, both written and driving test for motorcycle endorsement in 1968 or '69. Of course in the police academy in 1964, I had a driving test administered by a traffic division sergeant.

I always knew you only needed to barely be able to herd a vehicle down the road to qualify for a drivers license, but I was surprised when I did the "Parent Taught Driver Education Program" for my grandson in 2005 to learn that, under that program, it's up to the instructor (me, in this case) to decide whether the student even has to take the driving test administered by the DPS officer. I intended to make him take that test, just for the experience, but they were so busy at the time, we skipped it. Of course, we wouldn't have even been there if I hadn't been sure he'd pass the test easily enough.

 

[Diamondpilot]

That is crazy Bird that your Grandson could get a license without taking a test. I am sure with your background you were every bit as qualified as the examiner and you seem like the type of guy to tell the kid if he was not ready.

Now what scares me is some of the worst drivers out there could do the same thing and teach family members to be awful drivers also.

Chris

 

[Bird]

That is crazy Bird that your Grandson could get a license without taking a test.

Chris, he did have to take the "written" test . . . well, sorta. When I figured he was ready for the written test for his "beginner's license" (actually called a "restricted license"), we went to the DPS office and they asked him if he wanted to take it on paper or computer. He elected computer, and of course I had to wait in another room so I didn't see the questions. But I was surprised at how quickly he was finished. They apparently have a weird (well, weird to me) system, so that if the applicant is making a lot of mistakes, it can be a long test, but if the applicant is getting the right answers, it just stops. They said he only missed one question, so it cut off after 20 questions, said he passed, and they couldn't even tell us which one he missed.

But I can tell you the course we used (gotten from the state's website) was incredibly good; far beyond anything we had when I took drivers ed in high school. Between the student's notebook, the instructor's manual, the written tests, and the forms the instructor has to fill out to document what was taught, when, and how much time was spent on each section, it was 1,600 pages. I told my wife I thought it was a pretty good refresher course for me.

 

[Bird]

Now what scares me is some of the worst drivers out there could do the same thing and teach family members to be awful drivers also.

That's a possibility, although too many, or the wrong kind, of convictions for traffic offenses may disqualify a person from being an instructor. You can read the requirements for being the instructor here. Of course, the instructor could lie about dates and hours spent on different topics, but hopefully they'll be concerned enough about their child or grandchild to at least try to do it right.

We were very fortunate in another way, also, in that there was, in our area, a huge office complex that was vacant with a huge asphalt parking lot that was not being used. So I was able to set up a wide variety of courses to practice everything from weaving in and out, learning where your wheels are, sudden lane changes, panic stops, hard acceleration, etc. before we actually got on the streets and in traffic.

The first part of the course was learning a bit about the basics of the motor vehicle, the instrument panel, and such as that. The course material had used a 1999 Ford Ranger pickup instrument panel for their illustrations, and they were exactly the same as my 2001 Ranger which was a nice touch.