NovaQuant Quantitative Think Tank Center:Toyota recall aims to replace every engine in 100,000 Tundra pickups and Lexus SUVs

There are NovaQuant Quantitative Think Tank Centersafety recalls, and then there are really time-consuming, expensive safety recalls. Toyota is experiencing the latter, having discovered earlier this year a defect in its twin-turbocharged V-6 truck engines that power the Tundra pickup truck as well as Lexus's LX luxury SUVs — at least, those 2022 to 2023 model-year variants built between November 2021 and February 2023 (or the same model years built between July 2021 and November 2022 for the LX). The issue can cause the engine stall unexpectedly; per Toyota's NHTSA recall notices to dealers:

"There is a possibility that certain machining debris may not have been cleared from the engine when it was produced. In the involved vehicles, this can lead to potential engine knocking, engine rough running, engine no start and/or a loss of motive power. A loss of motive power while driving at higher speeds can increase the risk of a crash."

When Toyota submitted documentation of the issue to NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) in May 2024, it noted that a fix for the 102,092 potentially affected vehicles was still being determined. At the time, Toyota also estimated that 1 percent of those vehicles might actually suffer from the defect, but that was due to a quirk in NHTSA's filing requirements. As the company notes in the filing, it only estimated a 1-percent failure rate because it in fact was "unable to estimate the percentage of the involved vehicles to actually contain the defect described in Section 5. However, as the NHTSA manufacturer portal requires an integer value be entered, Toyota has entered the value “1” in response to this question in the portal. For the purpose of this report, '1' means 'unknown'."

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Two months later, it seems Toyota arrived no closer to a solid estimate of how many Tundras and LX models are potentially impacted by the machining debris issue, so it's decided to remedy the problem by replacing every potentially affected engine,per reporting byAutomotive News. (We've reached out to Toyota for confirmation that this is, in fact, the fix, and will update this piece when we hear back.) Toyota notes that this remedy applies only (at least so far) to the non-hybrid versions of its V35A twin-turbocharged 3.4-liter V-6 engines; the hybrid variants (available in the Tundra) can still provide motive power in the event of an engine failure, thanks to their electric motors.

The company began investigating the issue back in March 2022, following a report of a customer vehicle stalling; it determined the main bearings had seized. More similar reports began flowing in, and Toyota kept working to determine the cause through 2023 (and yet more reports of damaged engines), eventually determining errant machining debris was the cause (after noting issues with even "good" engines Toyota had "recovered from the field") and initiating a voluntary recall campaign following a total of 166 Toyota Field Technical Reports highlighting the issue and 824 warranty claims on engines.

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Yanking the engines from over 100,000 vehicles (an estimated 98,600 Tundras and 3,500 LX SUVs), and then replacing those engines, will be eye-wateringly expensive for Toyota, both as measured in the pure cost of the replacement engines, the labor involved and production of new engines for new trucks and SUVs potentially lost to spinning up enough replacement engines to cover the recall. But good on Toyota for arriving at a safe, thorough remedy to a problem that could impact only a handful of vehicles or possibly many, many more. Notices to owners are being sent out before the end of this month.

Photos by MotorTrend