A Handful of 2012 TE Issues / Questions

[dsfra]

Just got our new 2012 TE a couple of weeks ago, and have run into a few issues/questions. Sorry to shotgun all this stuff into the 5th Gen forum, but I'm covering several subjects, and they are 5th Gen specific, so here goes...

Jacking Points - Asked the dealer about using a floor jack. Specifically, are there jacking points between the front wheels (crossmember maybe?) and between the rear wheels (center of the diff maybe?) so the entire front and the entire rear of the vehicle can be lifted up in one shot with a floor jack and put on jack stands, instead of jacking it up one corner at a time? Dealer's service department response: "Huh??? It came with a jack." Saw some references in the forum about maybe using a floor jack front and rear. Anybody know for sure? Want to get it up in the air and poke around underneath to see what I got for my $40K. Any issues/concerns re jacking up the vehicle with respect to KDSS? This should be covered on page 1 of the shop manual, which brings up the next question...

Shop Manuals - Looks like it's either AllData or Mitchell. Anybody have a strong preference? AllData gets good reviews on the web, and is what the dealer uses, but they only list 2010 and 2011 4Runner, no 2012. Dealer didn't know about differences between 2010 / 2011 / 2012, and didn't seem interested in finding out. I know about the engine options - am more interested in the drive train pieces downstream of the engine, plus chassis, suspension, and body differences.

Plastic Engine Cover - Any guesses on how to remove the cheezy plastic engine cover? Looks like it just snaps off? Any known issues re leaving it off? Air flow, heat dissipation, etc. All that pretty aluminum is too nice to leave covered with black plastic trim.

Gas Cap - Went looking for the gas filler door release with no luck, then noticed the finger-grabber at the rear edge of the flap. Amazed that the TE didn't have an inside release. Saw elsewhere on the forum that Toyota apparently has an anti-syphon thing of some sort in the filler neck, but still want the keep the occasional cup of sugar and random handful of dirt or whatever out of the tank. The vehicle will be sitting unattended at trailheads for days at a time while we're backpacking. Seems that Stant makes a locking cap (with all the requisite emissions stuff) available through J.C. Witless, Amazon, et. al. Anyone have experience with the Stant cap in particular, or advice about other brands, etc?

Floor Mats - Grimace. Ordered Husky Liners through e-trailer.com (have had good experiences with these guys BTW), and they showed up yesterday. They are a hard plasticy-rubber material (as e-trailer's website blurb says), but they really didn't fit well at all, and She Who Speaks With Authority pronounced them to be butt-ugly and said to send them back and look again at WeatherTech. I had in fact e-mailed WeatherTech before ordering the Husky Liners, and they said that while their cheaper All-Weather Floor Mats "are determined to be the best possible fit for the application from our many shapes and sizes" (i.e. they're generic and might not fit too well), the more expensive FloorLiner DigitalFit mats are made for the specific vehicle, and presumably are an exact fit. Anyone familiar with the fit of the WeatherTech 5th Gen 4Runner All-Weather Floor Mats? Spot on, close enough, no cigar? Also, the Husky Liner info sheet talks about removing the floor mat locating anchor hooks. Grimace again. Says to grab the end of the hook and pull up. Did so and they aren't budging. Do they need a really strong yank? Don't want to break them off since will be putting the original carpet mats back in at trade-in time.

USB Audio - The Nav / enhanced audio has USB inputs, iPood interface, etc. Want to find out more about using the USB port with an external 2.5" hard drive. Apparently needs to be formatted FAT-32, but not sure what other constraints there are. Talked to the "experts" at Car Toys today - first guy said "no can do" with any hard drive /any stereo, second guy said "only with special stereos" that are very expensive, third guy said "no problem with the 4Runner Nav / enhanced audio" but the USB port will only provide 500 mA, so may need to run an extra +12v line to the drive to get enough current. Anyone have experience with this?

Cheezy Front License Plate Mounting - Can't hardly believe it. Went to take off the dealer's licence plate (advertising) frames and found that the front was held on with 2 small sheet metal screws through the plastic bumper cover - already stripped. Assume they come from the factory with small dimples in the plastic to mark the screw locations so won't have ugly mounting holes/brackets/whatever in states that don't require front plates. Looks like my dealer reefed the sheet metal screws into the plastic and left it at that. Anyone know of a good solid way to mount the front plate? I poked a wire through the holes and there didn't seem to be anything solid in the first inch or two. Maybe Dremell (while holding breath) a couple of slots and use speed/clip nuts?

Trailer Towing - Kudos to Toyota: page 302 of the glovebox owner's manual actually specifies that the distance from the hitch pin to the center line of the ball should be 6.4". Information is a good thing.

Will be using a Prodigy 2 electric trailer brake controller, and it looks like it will mount nicely in the cubby hole at the bottom of the center stack, hanging out just far enough to allow access to the manual trailer brake lever on the bottom. Plan to use a piece of 1/4" plywood cut to perfectly fit the bottom of the cubby hole, covered in black cloth, rubber sticky-sheet on the bottom, with the controller mounted to the plywood. Problem is that I will want to run the wiring bundle through a hole cut in the back wall (toward front of the vehicle) of the cubby hole. Anybody know what's on the other side? Obviously don't want to cut / hole saw into a wire harness, heater duct, or whatever else might be there. Would need to be a contortionist to reach back in there and feel if there is anything lurking.

Got the vehicle wiring harness-to-controller cable from e-trailer. Then went looking for the trailer brake controller wiring connector plug up under the dash on the left side, but don't see it anywhere. Has anybody found theirs? Looks like there is a 4-conductor wire bundle with a likely looking plug and the right color of wires, but instead of hanging loose, it's maybe plugged into a holder receptacle to keep it up out of the way.

Rear View Camera - The rear view camera displays on the Nav monitor screen, but I saw during an SR-5 test drive that if don't have Nav then the rear view camera displays on the rear view mirror monitor. Will be mounting a camera to the rear of our camping trailer, and am wondering if all 4Runners come with the rear view mirror monitor, i.e. Toyota figures that it's cheaper to just have the one mirror with the monitor and install it in all 4Runners - Nav and non-Nav. Apparently the rear view mirror monitor is composite video, which is what my trailer camera is. So the questions are: do all 4Runners have the monitor in the rear view mirror, and if so is it composite video, and is the wiring in place and accessible up in the dash someplace?

Answers to any of the above questions (especially correct answers!) would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

And a belated "Thank you" to the people on this forum - I spent a lot of time here when trying to decide between the 4Runner and the likely competition (such as it is), and then between the SR-5 and the Trail Edition, and then KDSS vs. non-KDSS. Thanks for all the input.

 

[Antman]

Wow. All I've got is...Wow! :shrug:

Welcome to T4R though!

 

[Mguts]

Congratulations on your new truck!

Cannot comment on all of your points, but concerning the floormats, I have the Weathertech digital cut floorliners. In my experience, they are about as close as anyone is going to get in terms of fit. They match the contours and the size of the floor pretty damn well. I'd definitely reccomend those to anyone wanting to protect the carpet from pretty much anything.

Concerning the jack points, I probably should not comment as I have not jacked my 4Runner up yet, but with my Tahoe, if I wanted to go front/rear in one shot, I'd use the rear differential or the front as you mentioned. It did kind of worry me, even though it never seemed to cause any harm. I felt alot more comfortable just using the frame. But again, never having my 4Runner in the air, probably disregard my comments.

 

[limamike]

I can comment on the Weathertech Digital fit and hard drive.

1. The Weathertech digital fit are absolutely worth the money and will keep your wife at bay. I highly recommend plunking down the extra cash, not only for the fitment, but for the quality as well. The digital fit keeps most dirt contained to the mat, so cleaning is a breeze.

2. Hard drive: a FAT 32 hard drive will work, but if you have GBs of music it will be slow as hell. I had a 500GB USB 2.0 hard drive with approximately 100 GBs of music plugged-in for a few months and it wasn't useful unless it was kept in shuffle mode. The navigation screens are just far too slow compared to a smaller USB drive or an iPod. I uninstalled it after a while because it just wasn't worth it. Now I simply have a long iPod cable routed through the dash to the left side of the steering column where I mount my phone and I stream music via Bluetooth or direct via USB.

EDIT: I have an SR5 with the standard radio. Though I can't imagine that the folder/track navigation is any better on any of the other head units.

 

[philsey]

Welcome.

Here's how to search: The Forum's Search is, um, not so good.

Use Google, and this url:

site:5th gen T4Rs - Toyota 4Runner Forum xxx xxx

... where xxx xxx is your search criteria eg "gas cap"


And here's what I did about the license plate:

http://www.toyota-4runner.org/5th-gen-t4rs/76398-fixed-my-cheesy-looking-license-plate.html

 

[tlflow]

at least you're not confused over what lift and tires/wheel you want!

virtually everything that you ask can be found with the previously mentioned search feature.

It doesn't take very long to learn or seach, judging by the length of your thesis above you have the required time.

 

[GrantK]

J
Plastic Engine Cover - Any guesses on how to remove the cheezy plastic engine cover? Looks like it just snaps off? Any known issues re leaving it off? Air flow, heat dissipation, etc. All that pretty aluminum is too nice to leave covered with black plastic trim.

Leave it where it is, it serves a purpose. Probably to protect the hood from heat or to help the engine come up to operating temperature quicker. Whatever the purpose, you can be sure that Toyota didn't spend the $$$ on it just for looks. They only design for looks on what is seen day-to-day, not what us gear-heads see when we are poking around. Everything else is for engineering reasons. That said, a quick search for TRD CAI install will show you how to remove it.

 

[desertred]

Welcome!

I have a 2010 SR5, so the following answers may differ slightly from any peculiarities between the TE. However, the should be little/no difference between 4Runners between model years in regards t the questions your asking.

1) You should be able to jack up the T4R with a floor jack using the pumpkin in the rear and one of the cross members towards the front. There is (on the SR5) a cross member under the tranny, which may be a bit far back to get some good leverage (depending on the capacity of your floor jack). There is also a cross member underneath the engine that is in line with the rear edge of the front tire. On the SR5, this cross member is visible just under the back edge of the rear engine skid plate. The skid plates differ between the SR5 and the TE, so you may not be able to see the cross member under the TE if the skid plates protrude further back. You might need a well placed piece of wood directly under the cross member to avoid damaging the skid plate.

2. Not real familiar with the online manual services (I like hard copy manuals), so can't help you there much. There are some threads back from 2010 that post links to either downloads of the 2010 shop manual and parts catalog. If you can find these, you may find them useful. I believe the stereo surrounds between the 2010 and 2012 may be slightly different.

3. Someone should chime in regarding removing the plastic engine cover, as I'm sure quite a few members have done it with their builds/mods. I have not.

4. Stanton is like you best bet for a lockable gas cap. No experience with it though. Sounds like you might be the ground breaker here.

5. Floor Mats: Most folks here use the digital liners from Husky or WeatherTech. Both are a great fit (I have the Huskies). There is an extensive thread with pictures of both so that you can see the fit and the wifey can chime in on the aesthetics.

6. I'll leave the USB questions to the experts. I find that XM wit the stock stereo is all I need.

7. Yup, the front license plate mounting is one place where I'll call "Fail" to Toyota on the T4R. I neglected to tell the dealer not to mount a plate to the front bumper in favor of fabricating a bracket to would not need to tap into the plastic. I ended buying a bracket from O'Reily's or AZ to mount onto the bumper where the dealer had drilled into the depressions. The plate attaches to the bracket.

8. I figured Antman would be all over a towing mod, but it appears you may have overwhelmed him with you post. Sorry, I can't help here.

9. At least for 2010, the rear view camera mirror was an option on SR5 V6 models, so not all 4Runners are equipped with this option. The camera/mirror combo on 2010 TE models was standard on non-NAV models. However, I do not know if the mirror on Nav equipped models would have the capacity to stream video to it.

Hope this helps you to some extent.

 

[Wakeborder556]

I can comment on the Weathertech Digital fit and hard drive.

1. The Weathertech digital fit are absolutely worth the money and will keep your wife at bay. I highly recommend plunking down the extra cash, not only for the fitment, but for the quality as well. The digital fit keeps most dirt contained to the mat, so cleaning is a breeze.

2. Hard drive: a FAT 32 hard drive will work, but if you have GBs of music it will be slow as hell. I had a 500GB USB 2.0 hard drive with approximately 100 GBs of music plugged-in for a few months and it wasn't useful unless it was kept in shuffle mode. The navigation screens are just far too slow compared to a smaller USB drive or an iPod. I uninstalled it after a while because it just wasn't worth it. Now I simply have a long iPod cable routed through the dash to the left side of the steering column where I mount my phone and I stream music via Bluetooth or direct via USB.

EDIT: I have an SR5 with the standard radio. Though I can't imagine that the folder/track navigation is any better on any of the other head units.

Hey do you think the the HDD speed is the issue or the nav unit? I have an extra SSD that I might try to use to test once I get my Runner

 

[limamike]

Hey do you think the the HDD speed is the issue or the nav unit? I have an extra SSD that I might try to use to test once I get my Runner

It's the nav unit's processing ability to parse the directories and find the music; likely due to a slow bus speed or just a very slow processor. The same hard drive has no issues on any other system. I also suspect a fraction of the issue is due to it being FAT32 formatted.

You will get faster directory navigation with fewer files, but you will likely not see much improvement using SSD.

 

[Antman]

The plastic cover is mostly for aesthetics and noise reduction. If you want to remove it pull up on the front edge and then the back corners.

No tools needed...

 

[CmdrCody]

Trailer Towing - Kudos to Toyota: page 302 of the glovebox owner's manual actually specifies that the distance from the hitch pin to the center line of the ball should be 6.4". Information is a good thing.

Will be using a Prodigy 2 electric trailer brake controller, and it looks like it will mount nicely in the cubby hole at the bottom of the center stack, hanging out just far enough to allow access to the manual trailer brake lever on the bottom. Plan to use a piece of 1/4" plywood cut to perfectly fit the bottom of the cubby hole, covered in black cloth, rubber sticky-sheet on the bottom, with the controller mounted to the plywood. Problem is that I will want to run the wiring bundle through a hole cut in the back wall (toward front of the vehicle) of the cubby hole. Anybody know what's on the other side? Obviously don't want to cut / hole saw into a wire harness, heater duct, or whatever else might be there. Would need to be a contortionist to reach back in there and feel if there is anything lurking.

Got the vehicle wiring harness-to-controller cable from e-trailer. Then went looking for the trailer brake controller wiring connector plug up under the dash on the left side, but don't see it anywhere. Has anybody found theirs? Looks like there is a 4-conductor wire bundle with a likely looking plug and the right color of wires, but instead of hanging loose, it's maybe plugged into a holder receptacle to keep it up out of the way.

Here's a link to the brake controller install I did a few months back: Trailer Brake Controller Installation
Mounted it in the stack. It has worked out well.

The connector is down there, it might be tucked behind one of the other harness bundles.

 

[SeldomSeen]

Also, the Husky Liner info sheet talks about removing the floor mat locating anchor hooks. Grimace again. Says to grab the end of the hook and pull up. Did so and they aren't budging. Do they need a really strong yank? Don't want to break them off since will be putting the original carpet mats back in at trade-in time.

The floor mat hooks on my 2012 TE have an additional pin in the center of the clip. You first need to pry out that center pin with a small screw driver, then the hook will pull up.

FWIW I ended up purchasing the Huskys and they seem to fit okay. As others have done, I clipped all the little carpet points on the bottom in the places where they would rest against hard plastic rather than carpet and that helped with the fit. I think the fit will also improve once it warms up and the plastic softens and flattens out a bit.

Cheezy Front License Plate Mounting - Can't hardly believe it. Went to take off the dealer's licence plate (advertising) frames and found that the front was held on with 2 small sheet metal screws through the plastic bumper cover - already stripped.

One of mine was stripped as well. It sure seems like there should be a more secure way provided to mount the front plate.

And a belated "Thank you" to the people on this forum - I spent a lot of time here when trying to decide between the 4Runner and the likely competition (such as it is), and then between the SR-5 and the Trail Edition, and then KDSS vs. non-KDSS. Thanks for all the input.

Agreed - info from this forum was a big reason why I bought my first T4R. Thanks again.

 

[TOPDECK]

Instead of a hard drive in the glove box, I am using a high speed thumb drive. I tried a regular portable HDD and it was too slow.

I am not sure what kind of USB the Nav uses (1.0 - 2.0 -3.0) so I am using a Corsair 32GB Flash Voyager GT USB 3.0 drive. ( Link to product) It is rated at 135mb / second but I know I am not seeing that on the Nav but it comes in handy while copying files to it. But I also have USB 3.0 ports on my motherboard. If you have only 2.0 it will use that as well or 1.0, whatever. Switching songs and folders on the fly is very fast, but displaying the full songs and folders for selection takes a second or two. But that feature is only available while at a stop, so it is hardly used anyway.

I set my drive up very simply with just folders for artists and a couple random mix folders.

The thing that sucks is that if you connect your iPhone to the port it will access and play the Apple formatted music, but will not accept files of the same extension on a drive. So, everything needs to be converted to a .wma, or a .mp3.

I use free software called Freemake to do all the batch conversions. (cnet download) It is the best free software to do this type of thing IMO. I convert everything to a folder on a regular disk drive on my computer, then simply copy everything over to the removable drive. That way if anything ever happens to the thumb drive I can replace it easily without having to reconvert everything.

You do not want a HDD in your vehicle. They are too sensitive and are too slow at that low amount of power. High speed flash memory is the best.

 

[limamike]

Instead of a hard drive in the glove box, I am using a high speed thumb drive. I tried a regular portable HDD and it was too slow.

I am not sure what kind of USB the Nav uses (1.0 - 2.0 -3.0) so I am using a Corsair 32GB Flash Voyager GT USB 3.0 drive. It is rated at 135mb / second but I know I am not seeing that. Switching songs and folders on the fly is very fast, but displaying the full songs and folders for selection takes a second or two. But that feature is only available while at a stop, so it is hardly used anyway.

I set my drive up very simply with just folders for artists and a couple random mix folders.

The thing that sucks is that if you connect your iPhone to the port it will access and play the Apple formatted music, but will not accept files of the same extension on a drive. So, everything needs to be converted to a .wma, or a .mp3.

I use free software called Freemake to do all the batch conversions. It is the best free software to do this type of thing IMO. I convert everything to a folder on a regular disk drive on my computer, then simply copy everything over to the removable drive. That way if anything ever happens to the thumb drive I can replace it easily without having to reconvert everything.

You do not want a HDD in your vehicle. They are too sensitive and are too slow at that low amount of power. High speed flash memory is the best.

How much of that 32GB are you using?

A couple of points here to reduce confusion for anyone that may come along later:

1. The 4Runner doesn't use USB 3.0. I'm *guessing* it uses 2.0, so your USB 3.0-rated thumb drive isn't running at it's maximum data transfer speed anyway.

2. Portable hard drives run at or below 500 mA. The USB port in the 4Runner is capable of providing 500 mA at 5V, so it has no effect on the speed of a regular platter hard drive.

3. The speed at which my portable hard drive rotates is at 5400 RPM; plenty fast to provide data recall at real-time. The limiting factor in the setup is on the head unit of the 4Runner.

4. You are correct that platter drives are more fragile than solid state drives. However, portable hard drives are designed to be portable. Platter drives are nowhere near as fragile as they used to be, especially for shock and vibe resistance.

 

[BigredTEX]

How much of that 32GB are you using?

A couple of points here to reduce confusion for anyone that may come along later:

1. The 4Runner doesn't use USB 3.0. I'm *guessing* it uses 2.0, so your USB 3.0-rated thumb drive isn't running at it's maximum data transfer speed anyway.

2. Portable hard drives run at or below 500 mA. The USB port in the 4Runner is capable of providing 500 mA at 5V, so it has no effect on the speed of a regular platter hard drive.

3. The speed at which my portable hard drive rotates is at 5400 RPM; plenty fast to provide data recall at real-time. The limiting factor in the setup is on the head unit of the 4Runner.

4. You are correct that platter drives are more fragile than solid state drives. However, portable hard drives are designed to be portable. Platter drives are nowhere near as fragile as they used to be, especially for shock and vibe resistance.

you are correct on the "they're not that fragile" part i dropped my 1tb WD from a good 4ft (not spinning or powered) on to a tile floor (on accident) and it works fine still no bad sectors, no read or write issues, and still just as fast but i did go buy a few more drives for back up after that though :happens:

 

[TOPDECK]

How much of that 32GB are you using?

I am only using about half at this point, and that is pretty much everything on my iTunes. Most of the files were converted at 192kps.

The only reason I am using a 32gb drive is because I already had it because I bought two for quickly transferring video files between un-networked machines. But I only really use one for that purpose so I decided to put the other in the 4runner.

I am absolutely positive that the nav doesn't use USB 3.0, but I at least have the piece of mind that the flash memory inside is capable of using the max mb/sec of whatever interface the nav is using.

Sure a portable HDD is not as fragile as they used to be. I have many of them, but still not going to be as fast as top end flash memory. Hence the expense and popularity of SSD desktop drives.

 

[limamike]

I am only using about half at this point, and that is pretty much everything on my iTunes. Most of the files were converted at 192kps.

The only reason I am using a 32gb drive is because I already had it because I bought two for quickly transferring video files between un-networked machines. But I only really use one for that purpose so I decided to put the other in the 4runner.

I am absolutely positive that the nav doesn't use USB 3.0, but I at least have the piece of mind that the flash memory inside is capable of using the max mb/sec of whatever interface the nav is using.

Sure a portable HDD is not as fragile as they used to be. I have many of them, but still not going to be as fast as top end flash memory. Hence the expense and popularity of SSD desktop drives.

I'm going to play around with a flash drive a bit more to see where it starts getting slow. Keep in mind, I don't have the NAV unit, so I'm certain the NAVs have much more processing power than the stock head unit. That being said, I'll try my stock with a thumb drive with about 16 GBs of music and report back.

 

[phillyd2]

Not sure what you guys are trying to do but I found the system so slow that I gave up trying that big of a USB thingy. I went with a 4G mini USB, dumped a few hundred of my very favorite songs on it to create a best of everthing and called it a day. I would rather stick needles in my eye instead of trying to scroll through thousands of songs to find the one I want to listen to.

 

[BigredTEX]

what i use is an apple iphone (or any device with bluetooth) and the entune-nav center in my dash.