Hey Eagle, OUCHIE:

Documents: Toyota boasted saving $100M on recall - Yahoo! News

It shows they were playing a cat and mouse game with the US govt. while putting lives at risk in order to save money...........not good for their future the more you read it. If I owned a Toyota I'd be hot after hearing what they were pulling all these years. Internally touting how they had pulled the wool over the govt's eyes..............

 

Well, if Toyota has been playing games with the government and safety, it's been going on for a few years now.

 

The big one that seems to have gotten all the attention has been the police officer and his family in San Diego that were killed when they came to a "T" intersection and flew over a cliff at a high rate of speed. 911 tapes have been released from that one. After that incident it seemed the govt. finally had had enough and went after Toyota guns blazing.

Like I said, the friend in the NHTSA said the stuck throttle's are not a new issue and these documents coming out are proving that. I do fault the NHTSA for part of this by not following up better on whether Toyota had actually fixed the problem. The NHTSA realizes that they are partially to blame for this even though Toyota straight lied to them and said it was taken care of. Instead of checking it themselves the NHTSA took their word for it. Heck, auto insurer's started raising a stink about the stuck throttle's a while ago and were rebuffed. They knew something was wrong and Toyota basically told them to shut up and that they(the auto insurer's) didn't know anything.

 

I heard that 911 call. What amazed me is the fact that he didn't put the transmission into neutral or turn the ignition off. People think that simply turning the switch off instantly causes the steering wheel to lock.

 

I've had a stuck throttle in the truck when the return spring snapped a few times. First time it happened I gave the pedal a yank, once I realized that wasn't exactly working very well I popped the truck into nuetral, put my flashers on and started heading for the shoulder. Once there I cut the truck off and called in the breakdown. It took me all of a few seconds to go thru my limited options and react the first time it ever happened to me. The next time it happened I instantly knocked the truck into nuetral and got on the brakes to head for the shoulder. If your paying attention while driving and have common sense you can react and get yourself out of the situation. Now the deal with the cars pulling into parking spots and taking off............that is not something anyone can help or stop in time no matter how quick you are. The one's going down the road though that have the throttle go to the floor, that is very simple to get out of.

 

And, as a professional driver, you have a better sense of what to do to regain control. When many 4-wheelers are caught off guard, there is a much longer hesitation before reaction, and in that time, with the engine under full power, acceleration is much faster than in a truck. In a panic state, the thought process often goes AWOL, and they're headed into the final conclusion before "what to do" even begins to come across to them.

A woman that took her Jeep to "her mechanic" found herself with a stuck throttle because he put the throttle-return spring, on the carburator, over a bracket. The spring caught on the bracket and did not allow the throttle to return, when the light changed from red to green. By the time she realized she needed to switch off the ignition, she'd gone a mile and a half down the road, and smoked her brakes. She was extremely fortunate that it was late at night and there was no traffic on the road. Red traffic lights meant absolutely nothing to the car. I had a look at it, and changed the spring routing so that it did not catch on anything, and it worked just fine after that.

Now, put that mentality in a Toyota Camry whose engine suddenly revved up for no apparent reason, and where does that put them?

And, from the descriptions, some of them went to full throttle with no foot on the throttle peddle. No rhyme or reason, but in gear and going full bore. It was not a peddle stuck in the floor-mat. It's a computer-operated throttle, with a serious GLITCH.

 

According to a head mechanic with Toyota (he goes around training the dealer mechanics) that is a friend of the family, there isn't a single instance of a proven mechanical failure attributable to Toyota regarding these recent incidents. Never underestimate the power of bean counters....well unless you are Ford

 

Toyota testified today to Congress that what you said there Wind never was true............Guess the guy in England who was on cruise control when his pedal stuck would be lying then. He tried the brakes then started punching his cruise control buttons, one of the buttons he hit brought the pedal off the floor. Upon review he believes he hit the speed up button when the pedal came up, or he inputed a code without knowing it that brought it off the floor..........

How about this: Toyota may not know how much these issue's could end up actually costing them if they get a bunch of wrongful death lawsuits.

 

.................................................. .......................................... (wimper)....

 

Fact is, look at the differences between the cars we have today, and the 1955 Ford I first learned to drive. Back then, if we had a problem with the linkage, or even with a cable, there was evidence of it. It could be repaired. The more they put into a car, the greater the potential for something to fail. And, electrical, or electronic connections, can go intermittent. How many times have you turned on your headlights, only to realize that one was not lit? You slap it our of "Oh Sheit", and it comes on just as bright as the other one. Or, you change the bulb, only to find out that the new one won't work either. You go behind the bulb, move the cable to the right, it comes on. Move it to the left, and it goes out. And, no matter how they seal these new ideas up, road salt seems to find a way inside, and corrode the connections in a plug. Electronic circuits are a bit too sensitive to the slightest resistive connections.

When the throttle is operated by a signal, sent along a wire to a computer, it's not a 60 watt connection. It doesn't take a lot of resistance to blank out a small signal. No fatigued connections, just a momentary break in the signal, and is the rest telling the ECM to hold it at full throttle? And, is Toyota's ECM programmed to fail "SAFE", or just fail?

The computer does not get the complete signal, and what it gets says: "Full Throttle"... Now, find that bad connection. I DARE YOU.

New, improved, and better... As compared to "TRIED, TESTED, AND TRUE".

I once won a bet with a "Loss control agent" with an insurance company. He insisted that a short circuit would blow a fuse, or pop a breaker. I took two pieces of electrical wire and put two ends together with a wire-nut. Then, to speed up the process, I dipped it into battery acid. Two weeks later, the next time I saw him, I showed it to him. A dead short, he agreed, and it will trip the breaker. I plugged the other two ends into an AC outlet. The lights did not go out, and no breaker tripped. But, just under 3 minutes later, the wire-nut caught fire.

The wiring in a car (or truck) can get the same effect from one year of road salt, if it's able to get into the connection in a plug. ECM gets the wrong signal, and the car goes into full throttle. Go ahead and find the problem. It does not have to catch fire in order to negate your controls.