Regarding sticking gas pedal.
Hello to everyone.
I’ve been reading a lot about unwanted/sudden/unintended acceleration lately, just to make sure I don´t start a discussion that’s already found a solution. But there´s a lot of material out there, so please excuse me if I come with a used up subject.
I’m live in South America, in Venezuela to be more precise. I don´t consider myself a mechanic or an expert when it comes to cars, but on a scale from 1 to 10, 1 being a 14 year old girl, 10 being an automotive engineer, I would say I´m about a 4 or 5. What I do have is a lot of driving experience, with both cars and SUVs, racing on and of pavement.
Where I live people don’t make a living making the headlines, there is no such thing remotely similar to manufacturer’s or dealer warranty, especially when compared to U.S. or first world country standards, and down here GM and Ford still sells more than Toyota, furthermore there is no such thing as a transparent legal system when it comes to challenging big corporations.
On top of that I´m a very loyal fan of the Toyota brand, 6 of the 10 cars I´ve owned are TOYOTA. I say all this because I don’t want people thinking I´m trying to get something out of my posts. So to be clear I love Toyota vehicles, always have, since my 1986 Toyota Land Cruiser, I´m NOT trying to create a trend or to blow things out of proportion with my claims or anything similar, my sole intention is to get feedback so maybe I can solve a problem that happened to my 2007 4runner V6 Limited 4x4. Nothing else.
So here’s the thing, about a month ago mid-September 2010, I was driving my 4runner about to get on the highway, when it was time to merge into the oncoming traffic I floored the gas pedal and it got stuck on full throttle, of course it wasn’t immediately apparent, because at first I still had my foot on it, but as soon as I pull my foot back, the revs kept building up. There weren’t to many cars on the highway cause it was a Sunday I remember, so I didn’t panic. I just put shifter in neutral and tried to shove the tip of my foot under the gas pedal, while the engine was hitting the REV limiter, that did not work, the pedal was just stuck in that position, I soon found an area to park so I turned the ignition key to turn the engine off and slowed down to come to a stop. I opened the door got out of the car there it was, the gas pedal was still completely down, before I even had the chance to touch it with my hand it popped up again. I have weather tech mats, they are cut with a very high degree of precision and on the drives side they have a cutting on the right side so the mat never comes in contact with the pedal, unless you floor the gas pedal and then slide the mat over the pedal with you other foot, I tried to replicate the incident using the floor mat, but the mat is not heavy enough to keep the pedal floored and it would not be relevant, because 1- as I said, I tried to slide the tip of my shoe under the pedal, and 2- because when I got out of the vehicle I could clearly see the pedal stuck on the bottom without the matt even touching it. At that time I restarted the vehicle and went back home to take a look under the hood, took the air intake apart, and sprayed some carburetor cleaner on the throttle body, just to be safe. For me it wasn’t a big issue, it had never happened before, so I thought it was just an odd incident, nothing to be alarmed.
Anyways, a week ago I was driving downhill behind a very slow TAXI, so I pushed the gas pedal slightly, maybe less than half way down, after all overtaking a slow car going downhill with the 4.0 V6 doesn’t require too much throttle, and it happened again, the car kept gaining speed so I immediately shifted it into neutral, only this time the power was not at full, so the engine had high revs maybe 3.5-4k rpms, but not hitting the rev limiter. I slowed down a little and started kicking the floor mat backwards (towards the seat) to see if it had any involvement, but nothing happened, pulled to the side of the road and turned the car off, started pumping the gas pedal waited maybe for 10 seconds with the traffic behind me going crazy sounding their horns, started the car again and it was still revving up on its own, so I turned it off again, got out of the car, and again I could see the gas pedal down, this time about halfway down, I barely touched it, and it came back up. Restarted it and drove away.
Now the only thing I can remember doing on both occasions was fuelling up a full tank at the gas station right before the incidents, different gas stations. Other than that I can’t seem to find anything else that would impact the way the car reacted. I’m sending the car to the shop to get the throttle body completely removed and cleaned, have the sensors check, and the whole engine bay cleaned. On top of that I’m gonna be driving without a floor mat on the driver’s side for precaution.
So for me is a yes, there is something definitely wrong with the car, and “if” Toyota doesn’t find anything wrong, that can attributed to them, then we must gather owners cases in hopes of finding what fixes the issue. I hope that someone has something useful to share regarding this, as for Toyota, I don’t expect anything from them other than a way to fix this, I don’t want money ( I WOULD EVEN PAY TO GET IT FIXED), I don’t wanna go to court, to create a scandal or take advantage of anything, I just want to get the car to work normally like it has for the past 3 years. I know that day may never come, maybe cause is not an issue with all of their production, meaning that it only involves a handful of vehicles or just cause admitting a problem is bad for business, I don’t know. Until then please share true experiences that might clear the issue at hand.
By the way, mine is imported from Japan straight to Venezuela, just to let you guys know.
