Toyota's Tundra pickup truck and the Lexus division's LX 600 sport utility vehicle have been hit with a recall totaling 102,092 units in the United States of America. Turns out machining debris not cleaned from the 3.4L twin-turbo V6 during production may lead to main bearings failure, which may result in a stall. In the Tundra's case, only gas-exclusive trucks are recalled. The i-FORCE MAX hybrid powertrain isn't included in this campaign.
Documents filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reveal that early March 2022 is when Toyota received the first field report in the US market over a stalled engine. The subsequent investigation revealed that the crankshaft main bearings had seized. Come July 2022, Toyota received another field report and a dealership report alleging V35A engines with damaged bearings.
Engineers couldn't identify the root cause of the damage, but nevertheless, Toyota hypothesized that debris from the machining process might have adhered to the bearings. The hypothesis also resulted in the implementation of cleanliness process changes at V35A manufacturing plants.
Fast forward to September 2023, and Toyota Motor North America observed a worrying increase in dealer and field reports alleging engine failures from machining debris. This prompted the automaker to assess the effectiveness of the cleanliness process changes, with Toyota further looking into the installation validation process of the engine manufacturing equipment. What's more, Toyota had also looked into the design validation process of the V35A-FTS 3.4L twin-turbo V6.
Back in February 2024, the automaker determined that certain recovered engines showed some bearing degradation or damage, but no signs of failure. Toyota then cracked open engines that had yet to fail, and – better late than never – determined that debris amounts and sizes from the engine machining process may cause bearing failures.
Photo: Toyota
As per the defect information report attached below, Toyota Motor North America was aware of May 20, 2024 of 824 warranty claims and 166 field reports in the US market alone. Over in Canada, the company has recalled 9,665 Toyota trucks and 314 Lexus sport utility vehicles over said problem.
All documents listed on the NHTSA's website indicate that Toyota still hasn't finalized the remedy, which is likely a replacement engine. Given that machining debris might damage the force-fed sixer in widely different ways, it's hard to guess whether affected vehicles will get a short block assembly, a long block assembly, or a completely new engine.
On the other hand, Toyota did include four part numbers in one document, with all four of them being for long blocks. 19000-7U280 and 19000-70550 are LX 600 long block part numbers, whereas 19000-F4020 and 19000-F4030 are non-hybrid Tundra long block part numbers. The most affordable of the bunch costs a little over $15,000 at press time, making this recall a very expensive affair.
Owner notifications will be mailed by July 29, but in the meantime, owners can take matters into their own hands by running the 17-character VIN on the automaker's recall portal. Affected trucks were produced in the period between November 2, 2021 and February 13, 2023 for model year 2022 and 2023, while the Lexus LX 600 is listed as July 30, 2021 to November 25, 2022 for the same years.
After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well. Full profile
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