Red = complaint received and forwarded to Toyota, but no response from them
Blue = complaint received and forwarded to Toyota, and response received. Owner not happy yet.
Green = complaint received and forwarded to Toyota, and response received. Owner happy.
| Type 0f vehicle (ie Fortuner 4.0) | Toyota Fortuner 3.0D 4×4 |
| Car registration number | xxx xxx GP |
| Telephone number | 082xxxxxxx |
| Email address | xxx@xxxxx.com |
| Your story | In June 2007 I took delivery of a Toyota Fortuner 3.0 D-4D and to date have done 30,000kms. No modifications have been done to the vehicle.Ever since owning the vehicle I have found it to be very skittish on corrugated surfaces, and have reported this to Monument Toyota at each service, the first time being just two weeks after taking delivery of the vehicle. Despite reporting this instability several times, each time I have been told that everything is OK and that there are no problems.Last month I was in Swaziland, travelling at about 55kph on a dirt section of road that was moderately to heavily corrugated. There were four adults in the vehicle with some personal luggage, and so the vehicle was relatively lightly loaded. The tyre pressures were 2.1 bar all round and the road surface was dry, hard and firm. All of a sudden, for no explicable reason, the vehicle slewed to the left. I corrected the slew and then the vehicle started to slew to the right and thereafter, no matter what I did to the steering, it had no effect. During this period of no control the steering was very light – almost as if there was no contact with the road, and there was a lot of vibration. The vehicle came to a stop virtually at right angles to the road.This was a very serious incident. I had two previous incidents that were very similar whilst driving this vehicle – once when driving along the Wild Coast in August 2007 and again when travelling through northern Namibia in October last year - in this case the vehicle was carrying quite a heavy load. All three incidence were very frightening, and the incident in Swaziland was very serious indeed. These experience of mine, as well as other reports of the Toyota Fortuner’s instability published in off road magazines and on 4X4 forums on the internet, have left me with a deep mistrust of the vehicle’s handling resulting in being tense whilst driving. I believe that Toyota should provide the owners of these vehicles with an explanation at to the reasons for this instability, why it has not been addressed earlier, what the solution is and what they intend doing about it. I would appreciate a direct reply to my comments and queries and look forward to an early response. PS - The above is what I sent to Toyota SA - to which I have had no response. Last month I had KONI shock absorbers fitted, just before setting off on a 3,000km trip but retained the original Grabber tyres. The instability problem has been cured completely by the KONI shock absorbers |
Tue, Nov 11, 2008
Toyota Fortuner