2023 Platinum Hybrid Tranmission Shudder?

Sorry for the late response. I wish I had better news. I have not heard back from the dealership for about 1-1/2 weeks. The last time I spoke with them they said they were still working with Toyota for the approval of the electric motor. Too much time has passed, and I do not believe it should take this long, so I'm afraid the battle is still not yet over. I'm fixing to call them to get an update. I will update you. I do not have anything in writing regarding what was verbally said to me about Toyota resolving the shuddering issue by replacing the electric motors, so I can't help with that, and I'm doubtful I will ever get that in writing. Perhaps the service paperwork will provide sufficient information, but I'm not quite there yet.

 

I have a 2022 Toyota Tundra Hybrid. I've been through everything with Toyota to try to resolve the issue - They had my truck for over 8 months. I've had pretty much everything you can think of replaced, Then finally the Toyota Tech came down and said it was "Normal" - By this time, I've had the Electric Motor Replaced, Rear Diff, Controller & even the Transmission itself... The problem is still there and I'm Canadian, So I couldn't even lemon law the truck if I wanted to...

 

Shorr92, the fact that you had everything replaced, specifically the electric motor, and the shuddering issue still persists is highly concerning. Somebody in a previous post stated that they too had the electric motor replaced, and they ended up having Toyota buy the truck back. As far as I know, so far two people on this thread had the electric motor replaced, and it did not resolve the shuddering issue. I called the dealership last week, and they said that they were still working on it. I may have jumped on the Toyota bandwagon at the wrong time. This may be a long drawn out battle with no happy ending.

 

I'm updating everybody on my shudder issue.

I brought the truck to Keene Toyota in Keene, NH, three times. On the third time, they acknowledged the issue. They asked to keep the truck overnight for a Toyota Field Service engineer to inspect it. Upon inspection, Toyota said that they were aware of the issue, that it was software-related, that there was no fix available at this time, and that they were sorry for the inconvenience.

At this point, I contacted Toyota Brand Engagement. BTW these people are pretty much useless. You are talking with someone of mediocre intelligence who is trained to tell people no. This effectively got me nowhere.

So here I sat with my shudder getting worse. I was disappointed with Keene Toyota, so I brought it to another dealership, McGhee Toyota of Claremont, NH. McGhee also acknowledged the issue and opened a Toyota Engineering Dealer assistance case. Fast forward a few weeks, and I have heard nothing; the truck is now shuddering like crazy. I brought it back to McGhee Toyota...where it sits for the next 50 days. During those 50 days, a Toyota Field Engineer finally showed up after rescheduling. Again, Toyota acknowledged the issue and told me it was software with no current fix. This time, they conveyed that this issue is relatively rare, so Toyota engineering cannot repair it. In other words, the more cases that get acknowledged, the more likely they are to do something. It was also noted that modification of the software, mapping, etc, would require EPA approval, or so they claim. Seemingly, a drawn-out process as they depict it.

I have filed a lemon law complaint and have been notified by the State that my vehicle qualifies for arbitration. I picked the truck up from the dealer; they had reset the TCU etc. It ran great for a couple of hundred miles and is shuddering again. I would guess one of these aftermarket tuning companies could fix it for good. For myself, I am going to run the lemon law out and hope I can force them to buy it back. If that fails I will likely try a tune like all the 3rd-gen Tacoma guys did to fix slamming transmissions. Pretty disappointing for a 78k truck.

 

They know they have an issue. It is well documented internally, but they aren't going to say that. There is a reason they are asking for TAS case creation on the hesitation issue (T-TT-0777-25) as well as the rattle while stationary (T-TT-0775-25).

 

My 24 hybrid platinum started shuddering at around 30-40 mph when accelerating just enough not to get into boost. Now it does it at highway speeds. Took it to dealer, they said they drove a new hybrid and a non hybrid and they both did the same around 30-40. Said its a normal driving characteristic.

 

The normal driving characteristic line is a copout. Likely your dealer is too lazy to put in a TAS. Normal driving characteristic is akin to saying poorly engineered.

Using a gopro I have discovered that my driveshaft vibrates all over at the center bearing when the shudder occurs. 90% of the time mine shudders with torque converter lockup which i verified with a scangauge.

On a 40 mile trip my truck shuddered 654 times. Is that a normal driving characteristic? Eventually that will tear up the driveshaft and who knows what else.

Also, I had 2022 short bed that was totaled and did not do this once in 27k miles. Neither did the loaner one I had for 3 months.

No matter how you cut it, for $70k+ trucks you should have no shudders.

 

Quick update to the ongoing saga pertaining to the shuddering. I dropped my vehicle off today for the 15K service, and while there, I tried to meet with the service manager who back on March 14th stated that he was going to take the issue up with Toyota and request an electric motor replacement, but again, he was nowhere to be found. He said he would get back to me in a couple of days. I've left numerous messages and voicemails requesting an update and have received zero response, but that's beside the point. The service rep that took in my truck this morning asked me if I needed anything else besides the service. I told him that I had been trying to get in contact with the service manager regarding the shuddering, and he did acknowledge seeing this issue in the vehicle records. Then the young man says, "Yeah, we have been having lots of problems with the motors on these new vehicles." I could see the other service rep sitting next to him, that was overhearing our conversation, cringe at what his colleague just blurted out. The point of this post is to let you know that this is now the 2nd time that the dealership has verbally acknowledged an issue with the motors, although he did not specify shuddering, and this is a complete 180 to their initial stance, which was that it was normal for these vehicles to shudder. This leads me to believe that it is no longer a mystery, and my hope is that Toyota has a fix for this, and hopefully, sooner rather than later. The Toyota nightmare continues....

 

Toyota is well aware of the issue and is working to resolve it. This includes both i-FORCE & i-FORCE MAX.

The GX 550 and LX 600 are also experiencing odd issues with the transmission.

 

I am not convinced mine has anything to do with the hybrid drive motor.

As I mentioned, in further investigation, I was able to record flutter in the center shaft support bearing. This occurs at both high load (acceleration) and low RPM, lugging up hills, which the transmission is tuned to do. I also noticed that when I get vibration coming to a stop, the bearing flutters occasionally, which is likely induced by the regenerative hybrid in the opposite direction. I can put the truck in Tow or sport mode, and it doesn't clean anything up, just revs are higher.

With this, I set out to measure the driveline angles. I do not have access to the Toyota recommended angles, which is seemingly unimportant since they think they are correct anyhow. Applying simple 2-piece driveshaft rules, I can say with pretty high certainty that the angles are not great. If you look at some of the previous TSBs for the Tacoma there is pretty good detail as to the working angles that should cancel out over the 3 joints. Mine do not; some working angles are below what Dana Spicer recommends for a universal joint minimum. The problem becomes interesting in how the transmission and rear diff are aligned. There simply is not a lot of elevation change across the driveline. Minimal room to shim the transmission mount up, and shimming the center bearing down is the wrong direction. I half considered buying adjustable upper trailing arms to match the transmission output shaft and pinion angles because they are off from the factory by about 2 degrees, a secondary method in 2-piece driveshaft theory.

Interestingly, I did try shimming the center bearing even though I knew it was not the optimal direction. My logic here is that perhaps I could disrupt the resonance. Well, I could get all of the driveline vibration out under engine power, but it came at the expense of heavy vibration in the regen when stopping.

In short, my guess is Toyota fully understands these issues. By my math, if I raised the rear end about 3 inches and purchased adjustable upper trailing arms, I could get the angles looking pretty good with all other mount points remaining where they are.

 

Malavalley, it sure seems like your issues are not related to the hybrid drive motor. I'm fairly convinced that the issue with my shuddering is the electric motor. Last week, I went in to the dealership to get an update on the replacement motor that they stated would fix the shuddering. As I mentioned in a previous post, the service manager finally gave in and stated that Toyota had been resolving the shuddering issues by replacing the electric motors. However, this took place in early March, and here we are in late May and nothing has been done. As usual, the service manager I needed to speak with was not available, so I asked to speak to the other service manager, and of course, we pretty much had to start the entire story from scratch which was frustrating to say the least. He asked if we could go for a drive in my vehicle, and so we did. He felt the shuddering and then tried to convince me that it was normal for the hybrids to shudder. He then asked if I would be willing to drive another hybrid from the lot to compare. I agreed to do so, but informed him that regardless of whether the new truck shuddered or not, it would not change my stance on the fact that it is not normal for there to be shuddering coming from the motor, or transmission, or whatever is causing the shuddering. So, while driving the new Tundra I did detect a subtle shudder at low speeds. I was not able to feel the shuddering at higher speeds. I told him that this was exactly what my truck drove like from the first day I drove it off their lot, and that the subtle shuddering at low speeds and low RPMS became more noticeable and more frequent and is now very noticeable at all speeds. So, I asked him why it was that the shuddering has become more noticeable and frequent, and I also asked him if the shuddering would continue to worsen over time. He gave me the run around and continued to try and convince me that the shuddering was a normal thing for all Toyota hybrids. He told me that a Toyota technician would be visiting him the following day, so I told him to bring up my case and to get back to me with more information. I never heard back from him. I'm really baffled that there still isn't a recall or a required service visit to resolve this.

 

Captain74, you have reminded me that I need to make some updates here. My issue was definitely related to the driveline.

Since my last post, I brought the truck to a local shop that I trust that does a lot of custom hot rods, etc. I also brought them a trailer, my 4500lb boat, so they could try towing it and identify how unbearable the issue becomes. They road tested the vehicle unloaded with a driveline vibration analyzer and rigged some video to monitor the driveshaft. They noted that on a 30-mile road test the vehicle experienced, in their opinion, excess lateral driveshaft vibration about 500 times, noted both through logged accelerations and imagery. They then towed the boat...and explained the vibration as a critical level and cut testing short. From there, they removed the rear driveshaft and drove the truck in 4wd. They noted that all shuddering and vibration went away. At that point, they put the vehicle on a rack and measured the driveline angles. The drive shaft had ~1 degree working angle downward from the transfer case to the center bearing, 0.1 degrees upward towards the rear differential, and 1.7 degrees downward at the rear differential. They noted that the working angles in fact do not cancel, that the center u-joint is operating at less than 0.5 degrees as specified by Dana Spicer, and that the transfer case output and pinion angles are nowhere near the same plane. They noted that due to the position of the center bearing mount, there was no latitude to shim it in the correction direction, and no adjustability in the rear 5-link suspension to mitigate the pinion angles. They wrote me a nice report and referred me to a Dana Spicer certified driveline shop to explore remedial options.

The driveline shop quickly identified and documented the issues. Their remedial actions included options for a 1.) a custom one-piece rear driveshaft with double cardan joint. 2.) Installation of adjustable upper trailing arms, adjustable panhard bar, and a.) taller HD coil springs, or b.) a coil spring spacer. 3.) They also noted that raising the truck's rear suspension by ~3" corrected all geometry issues in the driveline and that lifting the rear suspension by 3" would remediate the issues but added considerable rake without lifting the front end.

Anyhow, I opted for option #2. They used the TRD Pro factory coil spring spacer and installed adjustable upper trailing arms and panhard rod. There is a good aftermarket for this as the LC300 shares the same suspension components. I am happy to report that I have ZERO shuddering or vibration now, loaded, unloaded, etc. As an added note, I also have zero vibration or shuddering under braking, which the dealer also stated was a normal artifact of the regenerative braking.

I entered arbitration with Toyota to solve this, and they responded via counsel that their engineering team examined the vehicle and found it to be operating normally and free of defects. So, in short, I needed documented retribution to support my case, which is why I went to this extent. Hopefully, this information will help someone else here. I have no idea why my driveline angles were this far off. Toyota does have six different coil spring part numbers, four trailing arm part numbers, and three transmission mount part numbers for derivatives of the Tundra. Perhaps mine had the wrong parts installed from the factory? Unfortunately, neither Toyota engineering nor the dealer, despite claiming to have verified angles, caught it. Now I get to go through the arbitration process. Despite enjoying the vehicle, this process has been so painful that I am tempted to tell them to keep the truck. If they don't chain me to an NDA, I will update on the outcome.

 

Hey Captain74!,
Do you have any update on a fix for your truck? I am really hoping a TSB is issued soon and that the next time I bring my truck in they don’t just tell me it is normal.
Thanks

 

Mountainbikek, I have no updates to give. Unfortunately, as per my previous post, I was unable to speak to the service manager who had stated that he was going to proceed with the paperwork that Toyota requires for the replacement of the electric motor, and so I spoke and drove with another service manager who or course stated that the shuddering is normal for all Toyota hybrids. So, at this point, they have succeeded in dragging this on for over a year, and I'm tired of dealing with it. I'm just going to wait this out and see if Toyota comes up with a service update. It's beyond frustrating to say the least.