With a lot of skepticism, I
With a lot of skepticism, I told the dealer in November of 2015 to go ahead and order the frame replacement from Toyota for my '05 Tacoma, SR5, 4x4, 2TRFE engine.
I received a call on Thursday, March 3, 2016 that the repair parts had arrived at the dealer. I dropped off the Truck the following Monday and was given a new Corolla for a loaner car. I didn't mind, as I did not need the hauling capacity of my Truck for a few days.
The dealer called me back on Wednesday and tried to up-sell me on repairs. He said I could use:
New spark plugs. (Why are they even looking at the plugs?)
New tires. (Current tires are above the wear indicator bars).
New oil in the differential (why not transfer case and front diff?)
Fix oil leak on timing chain cover (would require an insane 8 hours labor plus parts!)
New gas tank straps (I don't see anything but a little surface rust there.)
I told him to forget all that stuff and just do the recall work to the best of his ability and that I would just sell the truck and wash my hands of Toyota if things didn't go well. I had ordered a replacement lower steering shaft to address severe steering binding, but had not had the opportunity to install it myself - I did give the dealer 100 bucks to install the the new steering shaft I already had. I know pretty much all of the 2TRFE engines leak a little around the timing chain cover oil seal; Toyota has TSB EG025-07 on this issue; they will only do the TSB free under 60K miles. I told the dealer to just forget it because I never see any oil on the gound, and I park in the same location every day.
The dealer called me late Wednesday and said the work was done. I went in Thursday and picked up the truck. I'll have to say they did a great job. Everything seems nice and tight and the tracking is good. No problems with ABS that some other owners reported. The only thing I found was one of the fuel line clips on the inner fender was broken and they had just put a cable tie around it to hold it in place. Everything else looks as good as factory or better.
Some, but maybe not all of the items replaced:
Frame including leaf springs on both sides.
Lower control arms.
Various bushings.
Many fasteners.
Rear brake lines.
Brake line unions and tees front and back.
front two bed attachment bolts.
I took the truck back on the following Monday because I felt the brake pedal feel was a bit soft. The dealer bled the brakes for free as part of the recall job. The pedal feel was better, and the service rep said they did get some air bubbles out of the passenger side rear.
It has only been a few weeks since the frame replacement, but so far I feel pretty good about it The truck looks much better now too. The SR5 suspension puts the body up pretty high and the frame is quite visible below the truck and especially in the rear wheel arches. It was an embarrassment to drive such a ratty looking truck - never mind unsafe too.
I thank Toyota for stepping up and fixing an 11 year old truck with such an extensive repair. On the other hand, I feel pretty sour that Toyota built such an inferior product in the first place, when they had known for years about the corrosion problems with frames they were getting from Dana. I feel really bad for the owners that were on the wrong side of the cut-off date, left with unusable vehicles and no support from Toyota.