Prius V-Brake Booster & Pump Assemblies Failures

Nothing beats an in person visit. You are then real, not just a phone call that is interrupting the real persons currently standing in front of them. Second, be ready to move up the chain of command. Even the G M and owner can be overridden by corporate.

 

How do you like the loaner? Fair trade?

 

Keep the loaner. Call it a day.

 

Force the maintenance 'for safety' and maybe it will get their attention.

 

My 2012 Prius v just had this diagnosed. I have 92,600 miles on the vehicle and jus 2 months past the expiration of the 2nd courtesy warranty. The dealership said their hands were tied and they could do nothing. Repair will cost $3,704. They suggested I contact Toyota corp., which I did by phone, got to 2nd level manager and his response was the same. I have just sent an email to Toyota corp., as follows, and we’ll see if they do anything:

I own a 2012 Prius v. I took it to the dealer because of lights on dash indicating I had a brake problem. Dealership informed me my brake booster/accumulator needed to be replaced. There is warranty coverage but it expired 2 months ago. This is on the second warranty coverage period. This tells me that this is a defective item and should be recalled, as it is for the brakes which is a safety item not a wear item. If I was the average driver, I would have accumulated enough miles during the warranty period to have this covered, but because I’m a low mileage driver I timed out on the warranty. I contacted Toyota corporate customer service and talked to a 2nd tier manager today (3/23/2022) and he stated there was nothing he could do. I’m very dissatisfied with this response given the above information. At the very least and due to the low mileage I would have at the minimum expected a prorated warranty amount.

I will keep you posted as to the results

 

The brake booster problem seems to be an age issue rather than mileage as your case illustrates. There was a class action suit and Toyota settled for the customer support program that expires at ten years from first use or 150k miles.

For money saving advice, put your location in your profile. There are many places to get this work done, probably for less than half the dealer price.

 

Hoping to avoid this on ours. Knock wood.

 

What does this part of your letter mean?

The secondary coverage expires at ten years from first use, or 150,000 miles, whichever happens first.

There isn't any mileage minimum to be covered, and it's not as if the parts are sure to wear out within 150,000 miles. Many cars are past that mileage without an issue.

 

if you never use anything, it would never wear out, so time is pointless on this issue in my opinion. An average driver goes 12-15,000 miles per year, in ten years that 120-150,000 miles, I didn’t come close to that. I owned a 2011 Prius that I put 350,000 miles on with no brake issues. I still say this should have been a recall item due to defects in manufacturing. Imhotep!

 

Porous castings, poor seals, whatever.

 

But what we in the peanut gallery mean when we say "defect in manufacturing" is often a lot broader than what "defect in manufacturing" really means.

The D0H recall was one where somebody identified an actual classic defect in manufacturing. There was a batch or batches of accumulators built where the metal bellows had a slightly smaller diameter than it was supposed to, and that meant on rough roads it banged around inside the metal can, leading to stress cracks.

If some engineers (either from Toyota or outside) ever find out why sometimes these actuators develop internal fluid leaks at high mileage, and it turns out to be a defect in manufacturing, then we'll know. Until then, "defect in manufacturing" is mostly a phrase we use when we are unhappy that something wore out. But there aren't any car parts that are built to last forever, and parts that commonly make it out to 150k and beyond are usually not considered to owe us much.

 

Toyota keeps the data of the manufacturer and other details as a trade secret. The only way that this data would be available is if there was a civil suit and there was court ordered discovery.

 

I think he means if he drove it considerably more, like my 250,000 miles, it may have failed under the v's unlimited mile program which ended in December. In fact, my 2012 v's brake booster failed years ago before there was much discussion about them on the board.

I am sure we will have many more unhappy owners in the years to come now the program has ended for most. Its one thing to have this happen when Toyota handled it over the last ten years, it is quite another after they stop.

Concerning @LongStrider, I would call GasketMasters and ask them for independent shop recommendations. Also call other dealers even if it means taking it to another city. Resist the temptation to go used on these parts. First the used part will fail again, second there are many versions even within the same year. The housing number is not good enough and most online used sellers do not realize it. Cross referencing the donor car and your car's vin to their brake booster part numbers is necessary.

Many online Toyota dealers like McGeorge sell the parts. The master cylinder assembly goes for less than $1200. We have heard of dealer brake booster pricing around $2400 installed. Shop around.

There is also a pump involved which the dealers change in that price. Some on this board believe the pump was only a first year fail.

 

It will....you just haven't driven it long enough.

 

For any recall they issue, there is a "Defect Information Report" filed with NHTSA and publicly downloadable from the NHTSA web site (expand "Documents" after looking up the recall, and it will be one of those). The report gives considerable detail on what defect was identified and on the process of how they identified it. They can be very interesting reads, and I don't think they all were held back until court orders.

For service campaigns short of recalls, there isn't that exact type of formal report, but you can still often find considerable information in the correspondence on file about a campaign or about an NHTSA investigation.

There are a couple different situations involving the pump.

• There definitely were bad batches of pumps in the first year of Gen 3. Those had their metal bellows made undersize, they banged around inside the can, developed cracks and failed early. That's covered in the D0H recall and explained in the defect information report that goes with it.
• So what about the ones that weren't built with undersized bellows? Are those eternal car parts that never wear out? Probably not. They might not have a known likelihood of early failure like the defective ones did, but they've still seen a whole lot of pumping cycles by the time a car is a decade or so old—especially if the car develops a ZJB-campaign internal fluid leak that requires the pump to cycle like mad. Whatever the reason an accumulator fails, it has to be replaced if it does. The reason just won't always be the manufacturing defect seen in 2010.

 

Only Toyota knows which and how many of these units have failed. They would also know, if it was a particular part, which subcontracter supplier provided the certain likely to fail part or combination of parts to the manufacturer of the pump (Denso) or the accumulator. Apparently, while noted by a certain number who have reported here, only Toyota knows which batch or series of the production run has experienced failure and even what percentage of that production run and at what age and mileage for each.

Based on how hard it is to get a replacement, I would conject that the actual number of failures are very low but not so low that they would have no need for the extended warranty campaign. Otherwise, a new large volume of new production would have been ordered and ramped up.

It would be prudent, and I readily believe that Toyota has examined each and every failed component to assure that it would not happen again in future versions of these parts. That would likely also include the climate or other conditions where each vehicle was operated.

 

I don't have any faith in any toy brake system..... unless it's not a hybrid.

 

You are correct, that was the point I was trying to make. Thank you.