RECALL GONE BAD!!!!

Jeff,

Thanks.

Checking the tire pressure was first on my list of things to do today. I normally check it before I drive out of the garage in the morning and make the proper adjustments at the filling station nearest to my house which is about 1.5 miles away. I normally keep mine at 38/36.

As far as oil is concerned, I use Mobil 1. The invoice shows I was charged for Mobil 1 10W30 (which is what I was charged for at the 10,000 miles service and received the stamp of approval from Jayman - the oil maven - in an exchange of PMs). The sticker on the windshield shows 10W40, though. I tend to believe that the computer generated invoice, with information received directly from the parts department, is more accurate than the technician's handwritten numbers).

I'll wait until a weekday drive to work, where I really know what mileage I should get on different segments of the road before I take corrective actions other than adjusting the tire pressure and checking the oil level.

 

Update:

The oil level was about 1/8" above the full indicator with a cold engine.

The tire pressure was 35(right) and 34.5(left) in the front and 34.5(right) and 34(left) in the rear (I have a very accurate Accutire digital gauge). Well, they got one out of four correct. I am more concerned about the lack of consistency between tires on the same axle and the inadequate .5 lb/sq. in. difference in air pressure between the front and rear than with the deviation from the factory recommendation or my own preferences.

This morning, on my way to and from the gym, the fuel consumption seemed to be normal. Monday will be the real test, though.

 

Is this a bad dream????
I brought in my Prius on Thursday the 10th for the recall, and I'm now driving a Camry provided by the dealer. They told me it was the 2nd time that week it had happened to them. Wth!!! They said they hope to have the part on Monday or Tuesday. Yeah, I'll be shocked if that happens.

 

TWENTY564,

My dealer told me that there is one other person who had the same problem as mine (are you in San Francisco?). By the way my car is still in the shop and they didn't deliver it as promised last friday. They also said that they have done other recalls before my car and had no issues taking the new program so I'm not sure if there is a specific batch of Prius's that don't take the re-flash very well. My car was manufactured 11/04.

I'm still waiting....

 

Check out this thread: Fried ECUs on recall service

 

In my case I went to the local service dept. when I received the SSC-50P recall notice. Fortunately, I smelled a rat and told them that I would see them next year.

I showed the service desk clerk the recall notice and asked if he was familiar with the recall, to which he assured me that he was. I then asked what was involved, and how much time would be required. He disappeared to talk with the only Prius qualified tech in the shop. After about five minutes, he told me that it would require three (3) days. After my astonishment and challenge, he went on to say that there were 67 pages of instructions, involving three different procedures, and that it was an extremely difficult process.

I explained to him that, after 45 years as a design and systems engineer in computer system development, I didn't believe him. Furthermore, with Toyota at the forefront of successful computer controlled automobile development, I did not understand why the installation would not be a straight forward computer supported process. From his description, it sounded as if the service tech had to hand-enter every computer program instruction, which is not an encouraging thought.

When I returned home, I called the Toyota Customer Service hotline to ask about the SSC-50P installation procedure. I was told that the procedure required no more than one hour, or two at the most if the service tech didn't know what he/she was doing. Furthermore, that I should have been offered a "loaner" immediately upon being told that the service tech required three days for the procedure....which I had not.

Like some have said before...I'm going to wait until next year when, hopefully, the local tech has had some experience and found out what not to do. Ya know, it occurs to me that maybe I was told three days because that's how long it would take the dealer to order and install a new ECM after the tech had fried the old one.....

 

<_<
that's it. i give up. you guys think what you like and ignore the KNOWLEDGE i'm trying to spread. yes, the techs are a bunch of uneducated morons who have no idea what they're doing and YOU and only you should be the one to fix your car. the dealership should hand you the $12,000 scan tool and let YOU do all the work because of course YOU know better than anyone what to do to your car.

in case you're wondering what i'm irritated about: it's a SOFTWARE BUG.

i give up!
:angry:

 

There's more to it, at least according to the Toyota rep who called me this mornning. Toyota had informed the dealership that the service needed to be performed using the latest software. However, the service manager did not inform the technician doing the work in time. (Clarifying responsibility is important to me not as some kind of blame game, but to decide whether to go back to this dealership ever again.)

Also from the Toyota rep, I should not expect the new ECU - which is coming from Japan - to arrive before December.

 

I was told the same thing about the software on Saturday by the service manager. If they used the wrong chip it messed up the computer.

Edit: I spoke to another manager today who told me Toyota had sent out the wrong chips to update the computers with. My dealership fried one computer, and just caught another. Another dealership locally fried 7 computers. He estimated that at least 250 computers throughout the country had been fried. Toyota did put out an emergency memo to the dealers to stop using the bad chip, but obviously, a little to late. The reason people are waiting for their cars is there is a back log of computers to be shipped to the dealers.

 

I would like to offer a bit of prospective to you. I am a Doc and I occasionally see one of my fellow practitioners ( includes Docs, PAs, Midwifes) doing something that is not current, It is hard to stay current and still cope with the daily grind. Maybe these are not bad people but just uninformed. As long as they correct the problem I will cut them slack. Clearly in my profession it is more important to keep up. If you want perfection I would suggest you fall on your sword and hope for something better in the next world. As I understand it the last perfect person was crucified. I could be wrong. Milage varies depending on your perspective.

 

The fuel consumption is substantially the same as it was prior to the ECM update. With 97 miles on the tank, the MFD is up to 50.6 MPG. My calculations are that I got just under 56 MPG on the way to work and a bit over 60 MPG on the drive home.

 

i just got a little PO'd is all. kinda gets on my nerves when people call people in my spouse's profession morons or similar insults. it's also rather important to keep up in my field, when designing drugs, otherwise you end up doing serious damage (think of the 1950s-1960s)

anyway, you don't hear me saying, 'oh that idiot MD screwed up my pancreas' or 'that freak of nature who wrote this computer program...' <_<

i sense a lack of respect because the profession doesn't take 4+ years of college and that isn't right. yes, i know prius owners are typically more educated than other groups of vehicle owners but that doesn't give anyone the right to play the 'i'm better than you because' game. i try like hell to correct, but there's a point where i quit bothering to talk to a brick wall. :angry:

i'm just standing up for a group of generally hardworking, respectable people who take much more crap than they deserve because everyone's a self-proclaimed expert on whatever they drive. i've done it in the past and will continue to do so in the future.

 

that would place the blame on the service manager. i'm just SO sick and tired of people being so quick to start bashing the techs. i personally wouldn't go back to that dealer either if you're hinging your decision on this experience.

unfortunately, yes, there aren't any ecu's sitting around in parts departments. this sudden rise in demand has caused some major chaos and sorry to say, it may be a wait. hope everything works out in the end.

 

Galaxee your a relative newbie here on PC and as a person who has followed this thread, I'd like you to take some time and do a search on SSC-40-D and read about all the techs that fried ECU's on that update. They numbered about the same as this SSC. I would have thought the learning curve would have been surmounted by now, and it hasn't. What does this say about the training the techs recieve at Toyota University? not sinking in or not recieved. I don't have an answer but a couple of hundres pissed off Toyota customers is some thing the hybrid experience doesn't need. Were not bashing you but there is a underlying problem with the service update system if this keeps happening.

 

My car was also manufactured in 11/04. In my case the reprogamming seems to have proceeded without a hitch.

 

I'm seeing a sort of comedy of errors here. First, there's no
fail-safe ROM loader that can recover from a failed reflash. That's
a deficiency on the design side. How the heck do they get the code
in there in the first place at the factory?
.
Second, it's clear that in a lot of cases the techs simply don't
know about some of these subtleties, until they get bitten in the
nice person by them ... they just never encountered it in training or
shop experience. Now, in this particular case I would *hope* that
Toyota is getting appropriate warnings to all dealerships post-haste
about using the wrong THHT load, but maybe people coming in waving
their ssc-50p letters beat those warnings to the service desk.
.
Around this bunch, it could be in a few cases that an astute PC
reader who's also wandered through TIS a good amount *could* take
the THHT in hand and do as well or better than a tech -- in a few
small, specific ways, perhaps. And that's just a matter of what
someone's read or not. Especially since a lot of the manuals simply
present a cookbook for dealing with certain problems, not actually
*understanding* it. While "replace ECU" might get the job done
and the customer's car back to them, it's not a complete enough
answer for some of us grubby-innards aficionados. But many techs
simply don't have time to chase it to that level.
.
_H*

 

Frank-

I checked out a couple of the threads that came up re: SSC40D. I'll agree with what I've seen in there, that there are some jerk techs out there who don't really give a hoot either way as to whether their customer is satisfied as long as they're out of their hair and their bays. I'm just trying to say there are dedicated, detail-oriented techs out there who deserve better than having people instantly assume they're utter idiots because of what they do for a living. Also, seems there is a lot of miscommunication within dealer service depts and also between service and toyota corporate, which is not going to be entirely the fault of the "moron who was supposed to be fixing my car."

I agree that hybrids, being as mistrusted by the general public as they are, don't need any bad publicity or unhappy customers- and I think it's a shame any of it happened in the first place. If it happened to my car I'd be livid, as many people in that situation are. But do you think that a problem this widespread, caused by a software bug released by Toyota and not by failure to follow written protocol, can be blamed entirely on the guys who got stuck with faulty software to use?

Just sick to death of hearing all these people bashing guys like my hardworking, 60 hours a week, does all he can for anyone who asks him, husband and all the other nice techs I've met over the years who don't deserve this kind of badmouthing.

That is all.

 

G:

I can understand your frustration but let’s face it, the technician in the service bay is a LOT more visible than Corporate, and this appears to be a fairly serious software flaw in the update, at least with respect to the THHT.

As you may know, I do a lot of embedded RTOS for industrial process controllers, including those certified for Hazardous areas (Intrinsically safe). Trust me on this: there MUST be commitment from the TOP DOWN to produce safe, reliable software.

Otherwise GIGO: Garbage In Garbage Out.

I have already posted in your other thread a similar situation that currently exists with some industrial sensors in a Foundation FieldBus segment if the device is configured as a Backup LAS (Link Active Scheduler) and comms are lost while pushing new DD files:

http://priuschat.com/fried-ECUs-on-recall-...ice-t12202.html

With the media attention focused on “stalling†Prius cars, I can also understand why Toyota is in such a rush to push out the patch. It has been my experience – learned the hard way over +20 years – that you must NEVER rush a hotfix or patch.

It takes time, money, and commitment to write software to minimum CMM Level 4 or Level 5. A lot of folks expect a quick fix, and that is mutually exclusive to CMM +4. If some folks think they are capable of such development and integration, perhaps they should be in that field.

If I’m really in a rush and have a good team to work with, I can roll out major FB upgrades in 3 months, complete RTOS builds in 8-12 months. This includes fairly aggressive iteration and sample testing, including thermal cycles in environment chambers, noise injection, and “dirty†power.

If a client expects CMM +4 and a turnaround less than 3 months, I politely tell them to look for another integrator.

Hopefully Toyota has put the brakes on this “fix†before the serious PR damage is done. I do know that before I left Winnipeg on this latest job, my local Prius tech had refused to perform the “fix†until the glitch was resolved. He hadn’t fried any ECM’s and wasn’t about to start.

J

 

I avoid taking my car to dealer repair shops as much as possible. I have had constant problems when I did, and I dread it more than going to the dentist.

I have had repairs done wrong, parts left off, and wrong things replaced on a regular basis.

I'd estimate maybe 10% of this is due to the dealers giving a complex repair to some beginning technician to save money. And the rest is mostly the miscommunication that goes on between the car manufacturer, the US diviision of the car company, and the dealer service reps, and very little is any technicians fault.

I have extra problems with the service reps who make up stories, misinform, and refuse to put on the work order what I tell them is wrong because they know the customers are all stupid and know nothing.


My last car was a Mercedes and I had a braking failure that was intermittent. Took it to the dealer 4 times and they replaced every part except the bad part. Finally I had to do it myself. And this was all the fault of the service writer in the front office, not the techs.