2017 Tundra air conditioner disaster!

I suspect that you are a SuspectOwner because you suspect Tundra is making $ from the ac.,

I would suspect poor quality.

 

I don't think they make any money on the A/C fix. Mathematically, they make HUGE money on selling your used car and putting you into a new one. That's the model of perpetual recurring revenue. The goal is to get you to "give up" and turn in your truck. If you pay off your truck, and use AAA Repair Shops for service, they make ZERO! I applaud their desire for recurring revenue, but just not in a suspect manner.

 

I understand your frustration, believe me....!
Take the truck to an independent garage that doesn’t bid the repairs with a dealership labor computer program. Get more quotes and find someone who has actually done this repair before. I ended up finding a shop that was able to access the expansion valve from under the drivers side dash above the gas peddle and it cost me $500.00. I actually opened the dash panel and found the TXV myself, and then went to the shop.
The Toyota dealership here in Wichita didn’t diagnose the problem correctly, and they were just going to start throwing parts and money at it which was my frustration. I took it to multiple place after I knew what was wrong, I got quotes from $3500.00 to $500.00, some places wouldn’t even bid the job. There are a lot of garages out there that simply don’t know. It ended up just being a faulty expansion valve that was easy to replace, but most all the garages were biding the job as a 10 hour complete dash pull, which was not needed.
The most costly and worst case scenario is if the evaporator would have to be replaced, but that is a remote chance.

 

This is excellent advice! I just realized that my 10-year warranty is with a 3rd party company so I can check with them if they also cover me using shops other than the Toyota dealership. My past experience with the dealer was about 10 months ago when they seized up my brake caliper during a brake change where they opened it to hard and got it stuck. Instead of fixing it, they wanted to just replace the entire caliper assembly for a huge price. In disbelief, I took it to Midas and got it rebuilt for about $120. Sounds like dealing with the dealer has run its course and it's time to move on to smaller and smarter shops. I've actually had great experiences with a new AAA Repair Center down the street. Digging this forum so good to know it's here for the future. Hoping to keep her for 200k miles...mostly highway to the mountains.

 

Yeah I was down about it, but I realized that its still the best truck on the road, its not perfect, but nothing is. I’ve had four Toyota’s, this is the first Repair I've ever needed. .

 

My truck is 2018 tundra crew max .At 35,000 miles . Temperatures in texas Have been 96-105 being the highest and was amazed of how my truck was cooling just having it on for 10 minutes ice cold, even would have turn down speed knob. Then towards the end of the week i left work and took the freeway like always and five minutes in my drive all of a sudden felt a drastic warm or ambient air through vents then felt cold again but this time cold with ambient are coming and going while still flowing with cold air at the same time. Any suggestions?

 

It maybe on its way out. My Tacoma did that before going out but it was almost 17 years old.

 

This is an old thread and don't know if anyone is still following it. I have a 2017 double cab. AC compressor started giving me problems at 65,000 miles. Still working on what I'm going to do about it...

 

If the compressor is still engaging I would have it looked at before it locks up. You may avoid a bigger bill if it's taken care of before that happens. Good luck!

 

I had a F350 that had AC problems. It turned out that the desiccant bag blew up and contaminated the whole system. I could have tried to clean everything myself, but I just paid the shop to replace the parts. It happens.