2013 4runner Electrical Problems?

[mbxmikey]

Hi Guys,
Havent posted for a while but have always appreciated all the knowledge this board has to offer. I'm looking for a little bit of help if anybody has any thoughts. Three days ago my Check Engine Light, Trac Off Light and Crawl Control Light all came on at once on my 2013 Trail. The car was running just fine before and after the lights came on. I took it to the dealer and I am now $600 into diagnosis and the dealer hasnt found the problem. They called me the day after I dropped it off and started talking about a miss in one of the cylinders and possible compression problems. I had to laugh and ask the guy if he had the right customer. Told him the car was running like a top when I dropped it off. No misses. He said there were a bunch of codes and that was the first one they were going to fix. I explained that he needs to be looking at the computer of electrical issues because all those lights came on at once. They have had it for 4 days now with nothing to report. Car has 63,000 miles so apparently is out of the 60,000 drivetrain warranty. They said I have to pay for all the diagnosis before toyota will consider a good will warranty coverage. I feel like this is really gonna suck. Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated if anybody has heard of anything like it.
Thanks Guys
Mike

 

[TXt4rgirl]

Had something similar happen to my 2012 camry. I was sitting at a redlight and the traction control, blind spot monitor, and stability control lights all came on. Turned the car off and back on and the lights went off and drove fine. I took it to the dealer and they found a bad connection in the brake lights that threw a code. They replaced the connection and I havent had anymore problems. I dont know if its the same as yours but i thought i would mention it.

 

[darklights1]

Maybe your gas cap wasn't tight at all?

 

[Engineer]

I would ask the dealer for a list of the error codes, the full serivce manual can be found here and with the codes I would expect your could get to the problem pretty fast, while there are exceptions modern cars are amazing at "self diagnostics". For $600 I would want a detailed list of what they have tried while troubleshooting

 

[Antman]

Hi Guys,
Havent posted for a while but have always appreciated all the knowledge this board has to offer. I'm looking for a little bit of help if anybody has any thoughts. Three days ago my Check Engine Light, Trac Off Light and Crawl Control Light all came on at once on my 2013 Trail. The car was running just fine before and after the lights came on. I took it to the dealer and I am now $600 into diagnosis and the dealer hasnt found the problem. They called me the day after I dropped it off and started talking about a miss in one of the cylinders and possible compression problems. I had to laugh and ask the guy if he had the right customer. Told him the car was running like a top when I dropped it off. No misses. He said there were a bunch of codes and that was the first one they were going to fix. I explained that he needs to be looking at the computer of electrical issues because all those lights came on at once. They have had it for 4 days now with nothing to report. Car has 63,000 miles so apparently is out of the 60,000 drivetrain warranty. They said I have to pay for all the diagnosis before toyota will consider a good will warranty coverage. I feel like this is really gonna suck. Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated if anybody has heard of anything like it.
Thanks Guys
Mike

Sorry to hear your having problems Mike.

Check out this thread from a while back- Sounds like the same issue...
http://www.toyota-4runner.org/5th-gen-t4rs/114596-misfire.html#post1058538

 

[mrbtd]

Had a similar issue in my Camry...The traction control was disabled because the MAF sensor was bad and it was running lean. The way I understand it is some systems are disabled and that is why the lights come on.

Replaced the sensor and cleared codes and it never came back (50,000 miles). Sometimes just cleaning the sensor will work.

 

[mbxmikey]

Thanks Guys.

Im being told that it is an issue with my fuel pump. Seems funny but I had that go bad the first month I owned the car so it might be the issue...
Hopefully thats it. Suppose to get car back in two days. Toyota decided to warranty the work at 63,000 miles due to the fact that is might be related to an old issue.

 

[mbxmikey]

Well I guess I lied. The dealer installed the new fuel pump then called me to let me know that the truck is still having problems. They are waiting to hear from Toyota on what the next thing to research is. They have had it for two weeks and still dont have a clue... Sad. I dropped off a car that was running just fine aside from the warning lights that just came on and now it is dead.

 

[bloodninja]

This could be completely unrelated, but on every car I've owned (Toyota, Hyundai, and Ford), when the battery is on the way out, the electrics go absolutely berserk. Could be worth a try to hook it up to a Battery Tender and/or get battery tested.

 

[rigtec]

Hi Mike,

I've been following this thread since it began, and I'll tell ya... that Toyota dealer should be sorely ashamed for their conduct and the way they've behaved regarding this "Service" to you. One of the things that bothers me about this is that they had the nerve to tell you that you would be charged for all their diagnostics when they CLEARLY haven't done any accurate diagnostics. Anyway... I had a similar problem at one time involving multiple warning lights (in the instrument cluster) coming on, and staying on at all times. It started with the Traction warning light, then Vehicle Stability Control , then the ABS light, and 4low.

After that it was Seat belts and Power steering, then the worst symtom... the Tach-o-meter and Speed-o-meter would just stop working along with ALL of the Cluster Back-lighting; it would go totally dark when driving at night! "This progression evolved to this level in just ten days" and continued for months! The short version... It turned out to be the Main Body ECU Network. It wasn't flashing trouble codes! As a matter of fact, it wasn't communicating with the network or OBD port at all. So those warning lights weren't coming from the sensors or the operational ECMs/PCMs. They were being generated by the main body ecu itself; just triggering the LEDs in the instrument cluster.

Well, I purchased a new Main Body ECU online but didn't have the opportunity to install it due to the severe winter we had here in NJ. I was waiting for the snow to melt, and a warm day to work on the truck since this ecu is located as an integral part of the Driverside fuse/junction box down near the E-brake. I waited for several months and then suddenly... it just starting working properly again! I noticed it one day while driving... it would usually take about 10 to 15 minutes to start triggering warning lights; depending on the ambient temp. But they never came back on. Two, three, four... six, seven months passed and no false warnings!

I'm satisfied that something got Reset, or perhaps there was a stray copper wire strand somewhere that it didn't belong, but was somehow dislodged; I've done a fair share of electrical work in that cabin. So I can't say just why the problem got corrected, things don't usually work out that way :noidea: ...but it did! I wrote this up a while back so I'll post the link just in case there may be a gem in one of our community members posts there: http://www.toyota-4runner.org/5th-gen-t4rs/192198-switch-not-switch.html ...Hope this helps,

Rgds!

 

[mbxmikey]

Thanks Rigtec.
As of now the dealer is telling me that there is a "miss" in the engine. I dont buy it. I think its another code that they are chasing. No way the truck has a miss at 60k when it has been babied. And it doesnt explain why the traction and crawl control lights came on at the same time. I think they are just trying to buy time. I just dont know where this leaves me. Truck has 63K miles on it so I doubt I have any buy back leverage. If they cant figure it out, what do I do? Thanks

 

[rigtec]

"...I think they are just trying to buy time. I just dont know where this leaves me. Truck has 63K miles on it so I doubt I have any buy back leverage. If they cant figure it out, what do I do? Thanks"

Hi Mike,

I agree with you regarding the dealership trying to buy more time... I don't believe that they know what's causing the random flurry of warning lights. When that happened to me, Toyota 'Strait-out' blamed it on my aftermarket accessories e.g., foglights, subwoofer system, high capacity alternator, BEFORE they ran any tests... "That's not the way to trouble-shoot"... and my point of contention with them was that when they saw the aftermarket items under the hood, they condemned the vehicle with no diagnostic testing or evidence to support their theory. That left me responsible to figure out what the problem was myself, and so I did.

You may need to have it looked at somewhere else because they'll likely attempt to get you to finance 'Their learning curve' i.e. To pay for all the hours spent trying to figure out what was wrong with the truck 'With No Success'... and that's just not right. In my opinion, they shouldn't have called you 'Before' they'd actually gotten it running or knew EXACTLY what was needed to make the repair! Please keep us posted as to your progress with this; I am convinced that there are others here who will have trouble of this nature, that could benefit from your diligence,

Best to you!

 

[mbxmikey]

Thanks
I went in and talked to the head of service. She informed me that Toyota Corporate is now dictating what testing and parts replacement takes place on the car. She said at this point, she cant do anything without direct orders from Toyota. I did ask and she said she would look into getting me a free rental car. Seing that its been gone for three weeks with no end in sight.

 

[rigtec]

Thanks
I went in and talked to the head of service. She informed me that Toyota Corporate is now dictating what testing and parts replacement takes place on the car. She said at this point, she cant do anything without direct orders from Toyota. I did ask and she said she would look into getting me a free rental car. Seing that its been gone for three weeks with no end in sight.

How the heck did this escalate to the corporate level? :noidea: If this were a 'McLaren P1' or a 'Zenvo ST-1', I would understand the time and patience taken to get it analyzed; but these mentioned above aren't Off-the-line vehicles; they're both well over a million bucks each and are made to order. But this is... augh! Never mind... Keep your cool, and us posted, Rgds!

 

[BlackWorksInc]

[MENTION=107022]mbxmikey[/MENTION]

I've been keeping an eye on the thread trying to think of what could have caused the issue, but to be honest there isn't much information for me to work with (not anyone's fault, just sating a fact .)

Did you ever a print-out of the healthcheck that shows all the DTCs listed and so on? I would have them print/provide you with all the information/notes they have currently for you to review and/or keep on hand. It's unfortunately not uncommon for [us] (the dealer) to ask for you to pay diagnostics and IF we can goodwill warranty it or if Toyota extends the warranty for that issue reimburse you after the fact. The problem is that typically Warranty does not want to pay for diagnostic time (seriously, it's worse than pulling teeth and typically technicians get the raw end of the deal here from Warranty) so they are just covering their ass. That being said, you're $600 in and from what little information you have presented; it seems like they don't know too much and/or have possibly not really done significant testing (not accusing them outright, just stating that based on information provided in the thread [we] don't have much of an idea what's happened to the truck.)

The interesting thing here is how accurate the service manager's statement that Toyota is now dictating testing and parts replacement, because that's typically something that happens under warranty (because they don't want to pay for things that may not fix the vehicle.) So I am curious what the story there is if it is accurate. It could be that they will not release an ECM for the vehicle until further diagnostics are performed as per their instructions. We've unfortunately run into this a couple times in the past with customers who are out of warranty but may need an ECM and we've had to open a TAS case as part of diagnostics.)

If you could get us a copy of the TIS Techstream health check data and their notes and scan them for us to review, we might be able to get some insight into what is going on here. Hopefully it's getting taken care of, it's always frustrating when a vehicle ends up being this weird/unusual and I can tell you from first hand experience that the technicians working on it are just as frustrated as you are.

 

[mbxmikey]

Wow Thank you very much for taking a look at this. I will contact the dealer today and see if they can email me this report. Will post here as soon as I get it. I really miss my car. My third car which I have been driving for almost three weeks not is a 1972 Chevy 3/4 ton 4wd. I put a hundred miles a day on my car for work driving from job to job. I love my old truck but lets just say I am ready to stick needles in my eyes by the end of each day after driving that thing 100 miles around town...

 

[mbxmikey]

OK here is what they gave me. Seems like there should be more but this is all they wanted to give... Update: I am being told that I have a leaking valve. Heads have to come off to fix this and Toyota might not cover it. They are opening up a new case with Toyota because apparently this is not related to the fuel pump problem that occurred in the past. The dealer is going to talk with the Toyota rep today or tomorrow and discuss to see if they are going to do a good will warranty. Man I hope so because I am sure pulling the heads and fixing the issue is not cheap...

 

[mbxmikey]

Sorry, reposting pic in higher resolution

 

[BlackWorksInc]

Leaking valve huh? I mean... it's possible I guess? Do you know if they did a leak-down test on the vehicle vs. a standard compression test; I'd make sure all the ducks are in a row and that you're clear on who's paying for further diagnosis/repair before committing to anything.

 

[Boyds4Runner]

I know it's not the same year vehicle but maybe the information will help. I had my 2004 SR5 also throw the traction control light and a couple of others I forget.

When I first had my brand new 4Runner back in 04 one day the engine started stumbling at idle. Felt like the clutch in the trans was slipping and trying to lurch the car forward at a stop light. Anyway I would just shut the car down and restart. Stumble would go away.

That happened maybe 4 random times in about 8 years of owning the car so I could never really bring it in during warranty period. Finally at around 140K miles the 4Runner did the same stumble and would not go away with a restart. The lights on the dash came on too. So I knew at that point that it would show a code.

Went to local service shop (not Toyota) and they scanned it and said misfire in the #4 Cylinder (closest to the driver I think). But they were worried that it was due to a leak somewhere in the heads because sometimes the engine would run fine. They ended up going with the least expensive option first and replaced the ignition coil pack for that cylinder. Problem was solved.

Long story short, maybe it's a bad coil-pack on one of the cylinders? If they are seeing a misfire code it should tell them which cylinder or perhaps cylinders?

Just a thought before going into heads, etc.

Good luck and sorry that is happening to your 4Runner.