B1T/BST Campaign Warning

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Are people just not aware that you can shift an auto transmission into neutral? I mean - damn, if you've got enough presence of mind to dial a cell phone, don't you have enough common sense to shift the transmission to "N?" In most cases, you don't even have to press the button to go between N and D, at least on the 3 auto transmission vehicles I've owned. ...

But serious question, on these 'runaway' vehicles, what happens if they just shift to "N?" OK, maybe it would cause the engine to race up to the rev limiter, but that's a lot less damaging than plowing into a guardrail or another vehicle, right?

The sheeple just aren't smart enough to think of that. Or to simply turn the key to the off position.
 
you know whats weird is after they did this "update" w/o my permission i was driving home and it felt sluggish and felt like i lost power somewhere. it ran perfectly fine on the way there.


What I've noticed after doing reflashes on some Toyota's is that it resets the learned driving habits or 'memory'. A lot of times we have to clean the throttle bodies on vehicles with very little maintenance ever performed because it won't have a good idle after the reflash and the computer thinks it's a clean throttle body.
 
The sheeple just aren't smart enough to think of that. Or to simply turn the key to the off position.

As long as you're smart enough to turn the key to the off position just long enough to kill the engine and then turn it back on to unlock your steering wheel! I think it was about 20 years or so ago that some kids killed themselves on a local grade when they were killing the engine to save some gas on the long downhill grade and departed the road, rolled the vehicle and killed everyone inside.

In my experience I've found the service brakes more than able to overpower the engine at WOT on every vehicle I've tried it on. When I'd get a rental car with "warped rotors" (usually just an uneven deposition of brake pad material on the rotor surface) I'd find an empty road and I'd gradually apply increasing brakes as I apply increasing throttle to get the brakes hot and clean the surfaces of the rotor and it would generally significantly improve the feel of the brakes. I never had to fully apply the brakes to keep the speed from climbing and if I pressed harder on the brakes I could decelerate without a problem. In other words, every one of these cars had far more braking capability than acceleration capability.

I teach my wife that in the event of the car "running away" she should #1: APPLY THE BRAKES as hard as necessary and continue to pay attention to driving the car and pull over, #2: PUT THE TRANSMISSION IN NEUTRAL which generally only takes a forward bump of the selector and don't worry about the engine bouncing off of the rev limiter, decelerate, pull over and once stopped turn the ignition off. Either method ought to do it and everyone should practice it a few times so that if it happens you at least have an idea of what you're supposed to do.
 
But, I can say that the large majority of these "Sudden Acceleration" instances is mainly due to customers who stack floor mats and crap all over the floor of their vehicle (which is a lot more people than you would think). Yet, I am not saying ALL of these cases are due to that, there are a small percentage that from what I remember reading struck me as purely equipment related. There's evidence of Tin Whiskers (another sore subject since in '12 they banned lead in electronic solder in ALL industries including Auto & Aeronautics even though Tin Whiskers can be defeated by just 5% lead in solder) and even more recently some errors in coding that could lead to memory sinks causing the computers to possibly become over taxed on their memory and glitch out (a couple threads on the matter showed up in General and Off-Topic, very interesting reads.)

I'm very familiar with the issue of tin whiskers and in a past year (to avoid being too specific) I had a chat with an expert in the field who was convinced that this was the source of the runaway acceleration issue for those situations that couldn't be attributed to something mechanical like floor mats, etc. Sad to see that a problem that surfaced in WWII and really came in to focus as the space age dawned and was solved with as little as 1% lead added to tin solder or plating (3% lead is generally required to allow for inconsistencies in mixing or other variances) has come back to haunt us. Personally I don't know anything about how Toyota's system was built to weigh in at all on what impact this may have had but knowing what I do know I certainly couldn't say that it's not possible that pure tin components aren't a contributing factor.
 
What I've noticed after doing reflashes on some Toyota's is that it resets the learned driving habits or 'memory'. A lot of times we have to clean the throttle bodies on vehicles with very little maintenance ever performed because it won't have a good idle after the reflash and the computer thinks it's a clean throttle body.

i am a freak about maintenance. the driveability getting better now. i am going back to the dealer tomorrow for an unrelated issue and i am going to bring up that they did this w/o my permission.
 
Ya that's what was referring to being at stop in traffic & putting into neutral . Only what I was told ? Then in the last 3months TC has been screaming at low rpms .

Back when I was in the Army we had the old M880 Dodge 4x4 trucks (these were mid-70's trucks) with the 318 and Torqueflite (I think) transmission. As usual, the bid was for the absolutely cheapest vehicle they could get and I recall problems with the transmissions being so severe that by the late 1980's, every M880 I ever saw had a stenciled warning on the dashboard not to idle the engine in neutral as this could damage the tranny. I think this may have been due to the fluid cycling issue you are referring to.

FWIW I haven't heard of anything similar since then. I've been bumping my auto trannys up into neutral at stoplights ever since I got my first AT equipped vehicle in 2003 and so far I haven't had any problems or issues with it.

Maybe I've been lucky but it doesn't seem like a problem with modern ATs. :shrug:
 
Damn, wish I would have seen this thread. Just took the Runner in to have the trans looked at and they performed this BST while it was in there. Didn't even know they were going to do it. I never received anything in the mail regarding the campaign so I was unaware. Didn't know they did it till I saw the invoice sheet afterwards.

Before they took it back, the service advisor said they were going to take care of a recall while i had it there. I asked what recall (assuming it was the gas pedal cut), and she said it had to do with the "gas pedal getting stuck". From reading here and on 120, I knew I didn't want them to cut the pedal and told her I opted out of the pedal cut. She wrote it on the paperwork and told me they wouldn't cut it. That is the only "recall" she told me about.

Afterwards I looked at the invoice sheet and it listed this BST Campaign as worked performed. I asked what it was for and she said it was an ECM software update for safety issues and that's all she knew. Not thinking much about it, I said OK.

On a side note....they still cut my pedal. But she owned up to the tech missing the "no cut" note on my paperwork. She ordered a new pedal and they will be replacing it.
 
New to me

Just purchased an 05 V6 that has had the BST/smart stop recall.

Is there a way to remove or disable this?
 
Just purchased an 05 V6 that has had the BST/smart stop recall.

Is there a way to remove or disable this?

Nope, you can't "Back-Flash" an ECM and you'll only be able to install the most updated flash from Toyota, so buying a new ECM won't help. Hence the purpose of this thread.
 
Nope, you can't "Back-Flash" an ECM and you'll only be able to install the most updated flash from Toyota, so buying a new ECM won't help. Hence the purpose of this thread.

My dealership JUST did this without my permission even after I told them I wanted no recall work done and that I would sign a wavier, the service tech told me they were in the process of doing the recall and i said NO, STOP HIM, but apparently once it starts they can't do anything. So now they gave me a number for the owner and manager of the dealership. What if anything can I get out of this? I didn't authorize this work.
 
I got a letter regarding this issue a couple weeks ago. it went into the trash without another thought.
 
My dealership JUST did this without my permission even after I told them I wanted no recall work done and that I would sign a wavier, the service tech told me they were in the process of doing the recall and i said NO, STOP HIM, but apparently once it starts they can't do anything. So now they gave me a number for the owner and manager of the dealership. What if anything can I get out of this? I didn't authorize this work.

Honestly, I don't know? I mean as far as I know; Toyota tells us they can't back flash their ECMs... so you're pretty much stuck with it unless they somehow found a used ECM that hadn't been flashed? But I don't know how well that would work.

Yeah it sucks because once the writing process starts, it needs to be finished otherwise it will cause even more issues. That sucks dude, let us know what happens.
 
I'll let you guys know how it goes. I'm gonna talk to the manager tomorrow and at least see if i can't get some type of discount or free oil changes. At least something for unauthorized work being done to my car.
 
UPDATE: Since my run in with the recall, i talked to the Owner/manager of Steven Toyota in Harrisonburg, and it turns out, the recall had also drained my battery since the Tech left my car on but not started. I brought it in today, and he REPLACED my battery (which still tests good) with a brand new Toyota Truestart with 84month warranty, and he also called to find an ECU from a 4runner that has not had the BST done to it, and replace it free of charge. I was pretty pleased. If anyone lives in Harrisonburg area I recommend you go to Steven Toyota!
 
UPDATE: Since my run in with the recall, i talked to the Owner/manager of Steven Toyota in Harrisonburg, and it turns out, the recall had also drained my battery since the Tech left my car on but not started. I brought it in today, and he REPLACED my battery (which still tests good) with a brand new Toyota Truestart with 84month warranty, and he also called to find an ECU from a 4runner that has not had the BST done to it, and replace it free of charge. I was pretty pleased. If anyone lives in Harrisonburg area I recommend you go to Steven Toyota!

But be careful if you go and you haven't had the "upgrade" done. They might take your ECU!

It's good that they replaced the battery. A full discharge will shorten its life.

They did the recall on mine when I brought it in for an inspection when I bought it. It wasn't even mine yet! I guess they wanted money from the recall work. I definitely do not recommend my local dealer for that and various other reasons.
 
I'll let you guys know how it goes. I'm gonna talk to the manager tomorrow and at least see if i can't get some type of discount or free oil changes. At least something for unauthorized work being done to my car.

But be careful if you go and you haven't had the "upgrade" done. They might take your ECU!

It's good that they replaced the battery. A full discharge will shorten its life.

They did the recall on mine when I brought it in for an inspection when I bought it. It wasn't even mine yet! I guess they wanted money from the recall work. I definitely do not recommend my local dealer for that and various other reasons.

They did do the upgrade which is why they're replacing the ECU, and I agree, i'm pretty happy they replaced the battery.
 
So as a small update, I finally got a 4th Gen to test out today after doing a BST recall to it. Granted it was a V6 4WD, but I wasn't impressed with the BST. Its a noticeable drop (and by that I mean complete drop) in power with a few seconds of no power after the brake pedal is let go for the engine to recover with the accelerator pedal WOT.
 
So as a small update, I finally got a 4th Gen to test out today after doing a BST recall to it. Granted it was a V6 4WD, but I wasn't impressed with the BST. Its a noticeable drop (and by that I mean complete drop) in power with a few seconds of no power after the brake pedal is let go for the engine to recover with the accelerator pedal WOT.

You beat me to it. I went out and tested it in mine today. It was snowy, and I was in a parking lot, so I couldn't go very fast, just over 10mph (which seems to be the cutoff) and light throttle. It waits about 1 second before cutting engine power when applying the brakes lightly. After releasing the brakes (at a stop, now, with the gas still lightly pressed) it slowly ramps up the engine. There is only a short delay before it starts to go, but if it slowly ramps up it could take a while to get to full throttle. I didn't notice a few seconds of no power, but maybe you were doing something different in your test? Also, I have an 07 V8 4WD if it matters. If we ever see the sun again here I'll test it with WOT.
 
Revival...

I'm interested if there has been a cure discovered for this yet. I believe this recall was done on my 07 before I had gotten to read this thread. As I am invested in a pretty $$$ suspension, I would like to be able to use my truck off road.

Thanks T4R gang,
Pat
 

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