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SUVs Toyota Highlander Toyota Highlander Maintenance and Repair
4696 messages, Last post on Dec 02, 2009 at 11:52 AM
You are in the Toyota Highlander Forum. Your Hosts are steve_ & tidester
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My wife's 2004 shows no indication of this problem, no matter how hard I try to reproduce it. My dealer's Service Manager says there have never been any complaints about it that he knows of. If it does exist,I don't think it affects very many Highlanders, and it certainly isn't a safety issue like the sudden and unexpected accelleration issues referred to above. I also don't think it's likely resale values will be affected one way or the other. |
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| Sounds like the hesitation is happening on some but not all vehicles. It will be difficult to tell how prevalent the problem is and even more difficult to get Toyota to remedy the problem if not reported to the NHTSA. Please report this if you have the problem so that NHTSA can determine if it is persistent enough to warrant an investigation. Even if there is only a small percentage of Highlander owners having the problem, a recall and repair is needed since it sounds like this could be a serious hazard. I would be more concerned about personal safety than resale value. | |
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I had my '02 HL for almost 3 years. Never had a problem at all - just found that I didn't need this much vehicle, so I traded in. I would definitely recommend the Highlander to anyone that wanted or needed a mid-size SUV. Not sure what the hesitation problem is, or what model years it applies to, but I don't ever recall experiencing any. Mine was a V6 AWD. What I did experience, was typical (to me) Toyota (and other cars, I'm sure) gas pedal twitchiness. IOW, just touch the pedal - and vrrooom - whoa - hold me back kind of built in to make you think your driving a real powerful machine throttle response. My wife's old Camry did this a little, too. Takes a while to get used to, and then you find yourself feathering your way from every stop... I did however experience times when there'd be a reluctance to downshift at just the wrong moments, making me floor the thing and then wind up (literally!) in 1st gear at about 35 or 40 mph. Maybe this could be thought of by some as hesitation. These things are probably issues with a lot of cars these days with processors controlling everything. |
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Calling this problem (if in fact there even is one)a "safety problem" is a stretch. So far, all we've heard about is a hesitation when the accellerator is floored. Under those circumstances, suggesting that it "Sounds like this could be a serious hazard" is way over the top. Flooring the accellerator is the greater of two evils by a long way. Before setting off alarm bells about something that, so far, has been posted about by just a few individuals, it might make sense to cool the rhetoric a bit.
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Replying to: pilot130 (Nov 28, 2004 10:08 am) |
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Desertguy, Your sense of humor resonates, and I agree with sentiments about the CAS. Their complaint site, Autosafety.org, is so fraught with fakery that any semblance of credibility is purely coincidental. It's too bad, because if it had better control of those who take advantage of its lack of verification, it could be a helpful resource. The idea this "hesitation" issue constitutes a serious safety hazard sounds to me like a chapter out of another activist's handbook--one who is long since gone (perhaps?) named Blake. |
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apparently none of you "nay-sayers" have ever been caught "dead" in front of a line of oncoming fast-moving traffic. The Trac system in my 92 LS400 would instantly apply the brakes and also instantly dethrottle the engine. More that one time as I accelerated from a stop, not even close to WOT, and as I then crossed wet plastic crosswalk stripping and the wheels spun the engine would get dethrottled about the time I was 45 degrees to the travel lane I wanted to merge with. Terrifying at times, multiple second for the dethrottling system to allow decent engine torque recovery. Unless you've been there yourself, don't denigrate someone who has. When the vehicle accelerates normally, as one would expect of a Lexus, 99.99% of the time, one tends to accept that performance as the norm. It's like the Lexus Nav in my 01 RX300, that totally unpredictable .01 percent failure mode causes me to NEVER trust it. |
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Nope, never been caught dead in front of a line of fast moving traffic---and don't intend to either!! I try to avoid passing traffic when the road ahead isn't clear enough and doesn't present a sufficient margin of safety. I'm not saying that the hesitation "problem" Wwest describes hasn't happened, but I suggest it's an extremely rare and unusual situation. I feel the same way about the Highlander hesitation "problem" some suggest should be promoted as a serious "safety hazard." It just doesn't warrant that kind of alarmist publicity. An aside about your nav system Wwest. It's a satellite based GPS system like all the others out there. Yours is an 01 configuration--3 years old and climbing. You must know that databases in such systems require updating semi annually. Things do change--the most important of which are isogonic lines of magnetic deviation. Have you had yours done, and if so, you may find the accuracy factor will be more reliable.
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Just because you aren't having a problem that others are having, please don't try to minimize the experience. Pilot130, I find it appalling that you mention resale values in one of your replies, implying that this would be a concern to some if people who have this problem report it (#2036 where you say "I also don't think it's likely resale values will be affected one way or the other"). Read back through several pages of reports here and it is OBVIOUSLY a safety issue to those who experienced it and to other drivers who find themselves in the postion of trying to avoid crashing into a hesitating SUV. These reports are not about people irresposibly passing other cars as you accuse, but is about people making turns and hesitating in the middle of turn. If you don't complete a turn, you could be stranded in the middle of an intersection facing oncoming traffic. There are a myriad of other situtations where a safe driver could be placed in a hazardous situtation due to hesitation as described in reports here. Regardless, there is nothing lost if those who experience the hesitation report their problems to appropriate safety agencies. These agencies can then determine for themselves how much of a hazard this presents. |
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