Toyota's Check Engine Scam.
 

On my Toyota 4th Gen 4Runner when there was a check engine light that out of the blue appeared, they have to includ a flashing antiskid light.

This really has nothing to do with what fired up the check engine light, but if one googles the flashing antilight Toyota and many other online repair imformation for money sites, will tell you that your Toyota is dangerous to keep driving and you should quickly have it towed to your Toyota Dealer, or with the other online sites pay to get help.

All i had was a gas cap not sealed this had nothing to do with the antiskid sensors on my 4Runner.

I grabbed my trusty super costly Walmart $20 Hyper Tough code scanner, plugged it in and it found the fuel evaporator code, i retightened my gas cap and cleared the code, then again checked the system all was OK and check engine light and flashing anitskid light was now off.

If i had gone to my Toyota Dealers Service Dept. they would have checked me in sent me to their waiting room, and about an hour later came and told me i needed a lot of work to make my 4Runner safe to drive, costing a lot of money.

If i told them please make my truck safe again and signed the paper work giving them the Ok to do the work, in around an hour they would tell me it's ready and charge me maybe from $500 to $2000 dollars.

And all they would have done is tighten the gas cap, and cleared the codes.

Go to Walmart and get one of these $20 scanners they are all you really need.

Toyota does not have "scams". They have the most advanced and intelligent engine diagnostic systems worldwide. Toyota is and has been the first to incorporate all modern engine control systems, sometimes decades before competitors had even discovered engine computers. There is an engineered reason for the check engine light on your vehicle. Your wal-mart scanner is not capable of telling you about any of the reasons why the light illuminated. You might as well have thrown a stick at the truck to "get the light to turn off", both a stick and a chinese made scan tool have similar diagnostic capabilities.

And you have used the Hyper Tough Walmart $20 Scanner?

For your imformation all Auto Scanners are made in China, not even light bulbs are today made in the USA.

Many people besides me have used this small scanner and have had good results with not only finding the codes but having it tell just what the code has found.

And thank you for your thoughts.

Hit the gym until you can tighten your gas cap properly.

You may have cleared the code, but the system runs checks when the car is off. It might be days before the code returns. Dont pat yourself on the back just yet.

Note that the gas cap doesn't last forever. It seems to have some kind of crazy internal valving that gives up the ghost eventually.

I'm on Toyota gas cap #3. They seem to last about 4 years or so.

I have no experience trying a parts store special $8 gas cap... I've just gotten a new one from Toyota whenever the code won't go away.

Any code reader, $20 or $500 is likely going to do the same job (on our vintage and type of OBD2 systems) and tell what the code number is. Some can reset codes, others cannot. But the really expensive, specialized stuff can talk to sensors and equipment, alter perimeters, etc. I'm sure on some Toyota models that gear is Toyota specific... however, from what I've gathered from the shop that works on my '05, that's not the case with our vintage (snap on readers work just fine).

For $20 to know the code without having to go to the shop, that's great. However, if one's worried that a stealership is running a repair scam, well that's a different thing altogether. And certainly, there's stealerships of all manufacturers that run repair scams.

Definitely need to trust the outfit that spins wrenches on your rig, 'cuz it's your money and your rig; and after they've ****ed it up doing some shit wrong to it, they're gonna try to make you pay them for ****ing it up... then you'll get to pay someone else to fix it, too.

Toyota has a very stable and impressive ECM/diagnostic systems.
Suggest replacing your gas cap. like I have. The EVAP check is performed overnight while parked at regular intervals.

And to throw in my two cents, my 2001 developed essentially the same problem due to a failure where the filler neck attaches to the tank. Probably from me overfilling it for years to get the most out of my fuel discounts. So it can be more than just the gas cap.

This happened to me in my 4th Gen about 9 years ago. I was pretty nervous after googling what the flashing lights meant but I was at work and only about 2 blocks from the Dealership so I pulled it in to the Service Bay--just as you said. I explained the lights, they confirmed and then asked me to wait. Then, they ran their diagnostics and called me from the waiting room and explained the issue. They suggested replacing the gas cap as the seal was worn. I think it cost me about $26 for the part. I don't think it was a scam. I have had the same issue in my Avalon and in my Audi. In fact, the cheap scanner I have for my Audi actually would have had me doing substantial work if I had simply followed it's lead---but Google and the TT forums suggested that this code also be caused by a bad seal on my gas cap so I tried that first, cleared the code and it stayed gone.

What many seem to be missing in my post, is the $20 Hyper Tough scanner from Walmart, not only give a code it tells you what the code is.

Mine poped up the "EVAP" on the 4Runner on my 98 Maxima it poped up Idle control.

So the little $20 scanner is worth the $20 bucks me thinks, if you buy one and don't think so you can always return things to Wally World.

And as old Bucken Billy Ray says in his many tree chainsawing videos "BE KIND" :eyebrows:

Scam...okay :der:

What don’t you understand? Do you speak and understand English?
If so I will try explaining it to you, now what don’t you understand in my post?

Not all scanners are the same or have the same range.

For some reason my $20 bluetooth can read MINI codes where my autozone one can't.

My XCAL pulled a whole horde of codes on my lincoln where my bluetooth one showed me as good to go.