Created on: 2020-04-02
These are the Top 5 Problems with the 2nd Generation Toyota Tacoma!
Hey, friends, it's Len here from 1A Auto. Today I want to talk to you about some of the top issues that I found with this 2nd Gen Toyota Tacoma. And by 2nd Gen, I mean '05 through 2015. Let's get started. Before we get started, make sure you smash that like button. While you're at it, leave me a comment because I'd love to hear from you, and subscribe. And since you're doing all this, go ahead and ring that bell that way that you can be kept up with all of our latest content. Let's get started with pedal entrapment. And what I mean by pedal entrapment is basically what happens on these vehicles is the floormat can shift around, all right, you get inside the vehicle, you step in, you might notice the floor mat shifts a little bit. So, you slide it back and you get on your way you start the car, you go for a ride. You're driving down the road, you move your feet around a little bit, you're trying to get situated. Now you slid that floormat forward a little bit further and it's gonna get caught up against that accelerator pedal, especially if you happen to be depressing the accelerator pedal at the same time as that floormat slips.
If that happens, the accelerator pedal goes down, the floor mat goes right over the top of it. And that accelerator pedal says, "Let's go," down the road. You start panicking, you step on the brake pedal, the vehicle is not gonna wanna slow down very fast, because it still thinks that it's time to accelerate. So, it's gonna obviously cause big issues, and it's gonna be very scary. And that's why it's the number one thing that I want to talk about today. Okay, so some of the causes for this is, like I said, that floormat can move around. For some reason, the anchor points that are supposed to go into the floor or even the carpeting, they just don't seem to hold on to that floor mat to the point where they actually wanna stay. It's just not anchored tight enough. So, you step in or you move around, you shift that floormat, like I said, it gets over that accelerator pedal and it causes a big issue. So, what they came up with to fix this issue was they have an updated accelerator pedal that, of course, you can go down and they're gonna put in for you for free. And they're also gonna update those floormats for you so they can't move around. And there are, of course some other updates that you could try to do on your own to try to secure that floormat but Toyota says, "Bring it on down, and we're gonna make sure we fix it up for you right."
The second thing I wanna talk about is the TPS. And what I mean by that is the throttle position sensor. Some of the symptoms that you may or may not notice on that might be a lack of power, which would probably be the most obvious. Second thing that you would probably notice would be lower fuel economy, your gas mileage just went down, boo, right? Another thing that you may or may not notice is higher emissions. Something like that, you're probably not gonna really notice it unless you run in the vehicle and you're standing behind the tailpipe. Some of the causes for this could be something as simple as carbon buildup. A lot of times what will happen is inside that throttle body, there are little butterfly inside there, or the plate thinks that it's closed, when really the carbon is kind of holding it in a semi-open position, and it kind of throws off everything.
A lot of times what happens is the TPS is just old and it gets a little bit out of adjustment. And when this happens, it's gonna cause the timing to advance and it's gonna cause the vehicle not to run right, it's gonna bring it out of that preferred range for drivability. Some of the fixes for this would be, of course, to check that TPS sensor and make sure that it has the proper continuity where it needs to go. If it's not getting the juice, it's not gonna be able to do its job. Another thing that you'd wanna do would be to check and clean that carbon. Make sure you clean out that whole throttle body area where that plate is, if there's any black stuff, that's gonna cause an issue. If this problem persists, the next thing that I would more than likely do would just be replaced that TPS or throttle position sensor.
The third thing that I wanna talk to you about on these vehicles is the headlamps. A lot of times what happens on these vehicles, you go on a nice long road trip, you come back around, and you happen to notice that maybe you're seeing a little bit of an issue right along here, essentially where the marker lamp is. What happens is the bulb inside there gets super warm and it starts distorting the plastic. Once that happens maybe once twice, three times who knows how many times, how many times you drive your car, right? With the lights on it's gonna continue distorting it to the point that it dries out the plastic and it's gonna end up causing cracks and/or, you know, wonky-looking plastic over a period of time. Unfortunately, the only fix for this it's not really something that could just take a piece of sandpaper and make it look nice and pretty over time, because it's going to be the issue on the inside to start. You would have to just go ahead and replace it. And if I was gonna do that, I would just go right to 1aauto.com and get myself a pair of new ones.
And for the fourth problem on this vehicle, I made my way underneath because I wanted to show you something that we've all probably seen and that's called frame rust/frame rot. Generally speaking on these vehicles, the frame should come coated pre from the factory as they're being assembled. For some reason, one of the plants that was supposed to be coating it didn't necessarily do as good of a job as what they were supposed to. So, we had some issues with seeing frame rot on a lot of these vehicles. What Toyota decided to do was they had a little recall. Everybody that they knew of that had one of these vehicles, they call them up or sent them a message and they said, "Hey, we wanna take a look at your frame. If you have any major issues, maybe a little bit too much rust or a little bit too much rot, we're gonna ahead and replace that frame for you. If it's just a little bit, we're going to clean it up and we're going to make we seal it up nice." That's nice of them.
The fifth thing that I wanna talk about while I'm still under the vehicle might as well be the leaf springs here. What you might notice on one of the base model packages is you don't have this many leaf springs. And although the owner's manual says you can go ahead and load it up with a whole bunch of weight, people go ahead and do it. And next thing, you know, it looks like their truck bed's almost sitting on the ground because there's so much sag. Obviously, that's going to become an issue. Once that starts to happen, these leaf springs instead of being upside down type of rainbow, like a smiley face, they're gonna almost flatten out and just be a plain old frowny face and it's gonna be really sad, right? After that happens over time, these are gonna start getting weak and they're gonna get brittle. This is going to break more than likely right along here. This is where the U-bolt is so it's kind of holding it nice and tight. But this part right here kind of flexes, this is like the flex area. You'll have a broken leaf spring right here, and yeah, it could move around and it could go banging around maybe hit your shock which would cause a major issue. But unfortunately even worse than that, if you were on the driver's side of this miracle, and one of these leaf springs happens to break and it comes loose, it could either hit, of course, the tire or even maybe this plastic fuel tank, in which case you would have a major issue.
And another issue with this is if you have the TRD because you wanted the higher up suspension package, what you might notice, if you're driving down the highway with something like this, with all this extra suspension, you're gonna notice a nice stiff ride. You drive down the road, and you just think that you don't even have any suspension in the rear, it's bouncing all over the place. Because this right here is geared up to haul a lot more weight than the original/base model. So, some of the causes for this issue, like I said, is maybe the owner's manual said that you can tow a whole bunch of weight and the leaf springs just aren't geared up for it. Or if you have the TRD version, and it seems like it's really riding super rough, more than likely it's because you got a little bit more leaf spring than you need for just cruising down the highway without a load.
So, now just for a couple of fixes on this, if you're driving the base model and you notice that you just don't have enough towing capacity, these leaf springs are starting to flatten out. You could either upgrade to the TRD version which has an extra leaf spring in it. Or of course, you could just get one of those helper springs, more than likely put it in yourself with a nice set of U-bolts for of course both sides at the same time. And if the suspension is too tight, then that just means that you're just gonna have to get used to it. If for some reason one of these leaf springs in here did happen to break, you can either bring it to a specialty company that could probably take this apart and replace just the one spring that's bad. Generally speaking, what you would wanna do is replace the whole leaf spring assembly with these U-bolts. Obviously you'd wanna do an alignment. I like to do the shocks at the same time, and of course, I would do the other side of the vehicle at the same time.
Okay, friends, I had a lot of fun making this video and I hope you had some fun too. If you did, make sure you hit that like button, subscribe for me, ring the bell and leave me a comment. I love reading them. Thanks for checking in.
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