TRD Pro Full Transmission Replacement After 342 Miles

A true dream of a road trip turned out to be an absolute nightmare this past weekend. It’s a bit of a lengthy one but I’ll toss in a TLDR at the bottom.

Drove out from Arizona to Northern California to pick up my brand new TRD Pro in Ice Cap. I had been dreaming about this since they announced the new gen Tacoma and was elated when I knew the truck would finally arrive. So, let’s get into it.

To start the long story on a short note, I had planned the 11-hour road trip from AZ to nearly San Francisco since I was trading in my current vehicle (VW Golf R) at the dealer. So, flying out and picking up the truck wasn’t an option. Off we went at 3am on Friday to make sure we arrived early enough at the dealer to give some time to make some headway on the 2nd day of driving on Saturday.

We arrived at the dealer around 3pm on Friday and there she was, sitting out front, and the excitement truly set it. I was speechless, finally getting to see it in person and sit in the driver’s seat and get to say it really was mine. I know A LOT of people on here will hate on it and say it isn’t worth the money, but to me it was, and it still is. After all the fun events of purchasing the truck were complete, we were ready to go, taking a nice 4 ½ hour drive south down near Bakersfield to chill for the evening and wake up to finish our trip.

First impressions when starting off on this journey back home, one thing comes to mind. I saw someone else mention their description of driving the truck as “this thing floats” and there is no better way to describe it. This thing really does float, the seats are wonderful, no matter how much space they take away from the rear, I don’t care, they are so sick. I bought this thing for me, not to haul people around, I would’ve gotten a sedan if I wanted to do that. Nothing but rave reviews about this thing drove, even in awful California traffic, it was a dream. The interior is beautiful, and everything was exactly what I wanted and expected, if not better.

The next day after crashing out at the hotel for a few hours, we head out around 7am to make the last 7-hour trek back home. All was well, until about 30 minutes into the drive.

Heading up the 5 freeway in CA. Going around 70mph at the time. I was approaching a slow-moving vehicle in the far-right lane, so I merged into the middle lane, just before we started heading up the hill into the mountains. I began to accelerate up the hill, when all of a sudden, something sounded and felt like it popped in the middle to rear of the truck. All of a sudden, the truck redlined 3-4 times, like it was searching for a gear, I was able to slow down and it settled down around 50 mph. Christmas tree galore on the dash, I was able to get up to a pull off on the side of the freeway and turn the truck off for 15-20 minutes. After letting it rest for a bit, it started up just fine, the lights had subsided and the only thing that was coming up was a “Hybrid System Malfunction – Visit your Dealer” in the center of the dash. The hybrid system was active and “Ready” and it would move just fine under hybrid and engine power. We made the decision to go ahead and drive it down the 40 miles to the nearest dealer to see what’s going on. It drove just fine, shifted totally fine, Hybrid system would engage and re-engage just as it had before so I thought it may have just been a weird disconnect for the moment and just needed a quick once over.

We get down to the dealer. After about 2 hours I get a call to come back to where they proceeds to tell me that they can’t do much on the truck as Toyota Technical Support is not available on the weekend and would need to wait for Monday. But claimed the issue was either transmission or differential but would not provide me with what codes they may have found or how they came to that determination.

My fiancée and I then scrambled to determine how we should proceed, they were amazing. Offered 3-4 solutions, we went ahead with them covering the costs of a rental car and also transporting the truck back home to AZ. So, we end up going home in the rental and the rest of the day is history.

Sunday comes around and I am having issues with the transport company saying they won’t be able to pick up the truck until late in the week and wouldn’t give a solid day so the communication with the dealers was an absolute mess. I still also don’t have the work order from the service tech to show me what they had found or what the codes were so I am beyond annoyed at this point.

Cut to this morning. I went ahead and reached out to the Service Director at the dealer where the truck is currently at and explain my situation to him and he is already 100x more helpful than the tech. He went ahead and pulled up all the information and told me that the initial code that was found was for an Internal Transmission Solenoid issue. At first, I was somewhat relieved by this, as it seemed like it should be a fairly easy fix. But they still needed to contact Toyota Support and work with the Engineers to determine how they wanted to proceed with the situation. 2 hours goes by and I get the call. Toyota decided not to take any chances with anything else on the Transmission being faulty and opted for a full Transmission replacement.

So, here I am, 342 miles on my dream truck and it is stranded 400 miles away. They say it should take a week or so for the parts to arrive at the dealer and then a day or two for the install. Which then my dealer is covering the costs of flying out and bringing the truck home. Part of me is relieved that it’s going to be a full replacement, but the impatient part of me wishes they could just replace the solenoid and call it good.

But hey, if anyone else experiences the same thing, then at least this story is out there. Because I had nothing to reference and only anger and panic to work through.

Also, here's a pic of the beauty 45 minutes before her downfall.



TLDR; Bought a new ’24 TRD Pro, truck freaked out on the drive home. Threw Hybrid malfunction errors and now Toyota is replacing the Transmission on a 342 mile old truck.

 

Who was the selling dealer?

What dealer gave you the runaround?

 

This post belongs to a Ford forum.

Man...You will probably get a new tranny and after how much money you paid for that puppy hopefully Toyota will compensate you but all the time lost, time on the phone and inconvenience.

 

Wow, so sorry to hear this.

 

What a bummer. You might try to get a Platinum Extended Warranty for your pain and suffering.

 

I would defiantly push for this. Tell them that you’ve lost confidence in the quality of the truck.

 

It’s the least corporate can do. You bought the most expensive halo Tacoma and it shit the bed. Repair and long term warranty seems appropriate.

 

Did you happen to glance at the break in requirements before you put it in cruise on the highway.....

 

Nice looking truck.

$*!t happens and you were unlucky.

Toyota will do everything possible to make it right. Moreso than most any other manufacturer.

In time you will look back on this fondly, but it may take a while.

Enjoy your new truck when you can.

 

Funny I’m at 2,300 miles still with the original transmission. Guess I’m lucky then.

 

Or it "redlined it 3-4 times"

 

Yeah thankfully it seems engine health is all good though, thank god.

 

Wondering if the cruise control caused the issue .. being it’s a brand new transmission maybe it was too much for it …. Toyota quality at its finest …. Sorry to hear about your situation hopefully everything runs great after they replace the transmission .

 

Damn, sucks you had to go through this. Seems like a killjoy. Hopefully this is the last of it for you. Really surprised the transmission grenaded this early on. Brighter side of things, it happened while still under warranty and dealer covered costs.

 

If Toyota can't get things right on their top of the line $70K Tacoma, it sends a message that this new redesign is not ready for prime time and consumers better wait until next year.

 

There’s nothing special about this transmission, it’s the same one in other Tacoma’s. Sometimes shit happens.

 

Doesn't seem to work in this model, their most expensive model.

I'd be more than pissed if this happened to me after shelling out that much.

 

Steven’s creep … damn they must have had a markup hope it didn’t . That’s a terrible Toyota dealer here …

 

Nice truck and mechanical things happen. It probably won't be the last (hopefully it is for you), but enjoy the truck. Thanks for sharing.

 

Damn. So far so good with mine. Fingers crossed