OMFG---I CANNOT BELIEVE WHAT I AM READING.
1) the dealership should be glad your wife is alive.
2) the tech that did the work needs to find a new job.
3) you need to contact toyota corporate if you have not done so already and report the problem yourself, including everyone youve spoken with, the tech that performed the work and the service manager. go directly over the dealership's head or they will try to worm out of this...boulder toyota is a "5-star" dealership, i doubt they want this on their hands, unless you pin it to them. they need to own up, that's what a 5-star does...im frankly amazed this happened there. i bought my truck there, theyve performed several critical repairs to it, every one top notch quality, this seems unlike them.
4) the spindle needs to be completely replaced--a helicoil is NOT acceptable. your lives are riding on this, the front suspension is one of the MOST critical systems on the vehicle. the upper ball joint should probably be replaced as well as it's possible the joint was shock loaded at maximum angle when the system failed...see my picture gallery for a picture of the upper ball joint exposed. if the upper ball joint was damaged at all, you may see a repeat of this incident but from the upper end, and probably right when you need it, ie during emergency braking when the upper ball joint sees the most shear load.
5) if i were still in boulder, i'd go find the tech that did this and call the !$%#er out for you. whoever did it needs to find work somewhere else. seriously now...those threads are DRY. no anti-sieze, no thread lock, not even anything like chassis grease, they were dry-f@#$ed when they were reinstalled, and if two sheared and two fell out, they definately weren't evenly torqued to 59 ft-lbs. that's not 5-star service, that's sloppy, and it could have got your wife killed. the mounting surfaces don't even look like they were hit with a rag, much less cleaned properly. the small cylinder in the bottom photo belongs in the steering knuckle, that it was forced free during the catastrophic failure suggests a great deal of force applied in all the wrong ways to that cylinder; its retaining hole may be deformed at this point, and that cylinder is a critical locating device for the four fasteners (fancy term for "bolts") that secure the spindle to the knuckle. go to
www.pirate4x4.com, click to the tech department, and read billavista's steering articles...he talks about what fasteners are intended to do--basically the load is supposed to be borne by the interface between the spindle and steering knuckle, not the bolts...the bolts just provide the clamping force. that is basic engineering. whoever performed the tsb on your truck was cutting corners...i'd push awful hard for new parts, to include everything the jackass took apart and then potentially reassembled incorrectly. sweet jeezus, make sure the bolts holding the brake calipers to the spindle are torqued properly...90 ft-lbs iirc, with thread lock. those four bolts in the picture are plenty strong for what they do, tho i am sure with a breaker bar i could shear every one in half. i seriously doubt they were "defective" bolts, it's just that more was asked of them than they were capable of sustaining, as they were installed improperly. if they were overtightened, the two broken bolts may have already been plastically deformed or even partially separated; if undertightened, two bolts were asked to do the job of four, potentially under improper circumstances ie trying to resist shear through a loose bolt rather than fastening the surfaces together as the engineers intended.
6) there are a couple guys there who i know do good work. there used to be a guy named mike, who ran the blue group. just a suggestion, but maybe push for him to do the work...he seems trustworthy and really knows his stuff.
this isnt even my truck and i'm just about hopping mad. if it were my truck, i'd be all the way beyond pissed...i'd be CALM, and somebody would be up to their eyes in...well...you know...
i really hope this works out for you one way or another. i'm just amazed that this would happen to a vehicle that was serviced at boulder toyota. they replaced my steering rack, front differential, did the the towing harness tsb, replaced numerous parts on aj's truck, all done very well and without problems down the road (except for one minor issue with my a.d.d. unit, but i have no idea who was actually responsible...dealership or previous owner). i know they can do better than helicoils...apologies are soothing, but they dont get the job done.
good luck rich, they need to own up and address the affected parts. if they don't, talk to corporate, and if corporate doesn't budge, i believe someone had a good suggestion a few posts earlier in the thread.
-sean
Problem with Front Brake TSB
Heli Coils!!!
Linear Mode
