Toyota's electronic throttle, and..

Wait untill they start putting electronic throttles on motorcycles and motorscooters and riding lawnmowers and snowmobiles. cuhulin

Now I'm not sure about Toyota, but there was something disturbing about my daughters car, a 2005 Saturn Vue. GM had a recall on the CVT transmissions in these. Of course, since they went through bankruptcy GM believes that they no longer need to honor the recall, but anyway, I will digress.....

The dealer replaced the transmission (GM did pay 50%), and for the first few days, the car was fine. About 5 days after bringing the car home from the shop, while in the garage she started the vehicle one morning. The engine raced on it's own, and the speedo was reading about 50 mph even though the car was in park and the pedal wasn't being pressed. She turned it off, and called me in...and I started it up and the same thing happened.

I called the dealer and explained what happened. The rep put me on hold, came back about 3 minutes later and told me in no uncertain terms not to drive the car (which I pretty much figured myself, duh), they will pick it up. They were at my house with a tow truck within half an hour, took the car and gave us a rental until another replacement transmission arrived and was installed.

I've asked them numerous times what from the transmission would make that happen...some kind of sensor with a feedback into the motor? They would not give me a straight answer on this, but it sure makes me wonder....

but but but, black box, dangerous, parts suppliers owned by toyota, unattributed smear and bullshit...

good cite.

"Stewart" wrote in news:hok4u6$ke2$ snipped-for-privacy@news.eternal-september.org:

My wild guess is that you simply were not talking to anyone who actually knew.

Well, their reactions to the problem were far too quick for me to believe it was just good customer service. The dealer is a good 20-25 mins away, and they were there in 30 from the time I hung up the phone. Even my daughter was saying "wow, they got here quick!", and we had a freebie rental car not long after that.

While there may be "failsafe" mechanisms in place for sudden and unwanted acceleration, just what would make the speedometer read at 50 MPH and the engine race while in park that would be part of the transmission? Some kind of speed feedback sensor? I would have to believe that if this happened while driving the vehicle, it could have created a dangerous situation. My phone calls and emails to Saturn have gone unanswered....but I will eventually find an answer.

"Stewart" wrote in news:holrdv$r31$ snipped-for-privacy@news.eternal-september.org:

Oh, I'm sure you got someone who could immediately talk to a tow truck driver, but that certainly isn't the same as you talking to the actual mechanic that worked on your car is it?

Anyone would know that it as a severe problem that would have to be fixed immediately and made the vehicle unsafe. You just talked to someone competent at the dealership is all.

As for actual *cause*, I'll leave that to the mechanics here, but I have my doubts it could *only* be one thing.

Yes, it could have been a combination of things...but they replaced the transmission they had just recently replaced. I guess I just need to keep digging.

I was the unfortunate owner of Vue with the CVT transmission as well. I also got a new transmission (and promptly traded off the car).

The control system on those cars was very complicated since the ECM altered both the engine speed and the transmission gear ratio based on the vehicle speed and accelerator pedal position. As a wild guess, I'd suspect the vehicle speed sensor was hosed and the engine controller was attempting to match the engine speed and transmission gear ratio to the false road speed reading - even though the car was not moving.

In addition to the new transmission at around 38,000 miles, my Vue had also had the transmission in for another recall early on. Basically GM just screwed the pooch on that CVT. In theory it was a good idea, in practice the GM design sucked. My parents had a Ford Freestyle with a ZF supplied CVT and it never had a problem, so I know it can be done. I also think Nissans sells a number of vehicles with CVTs and I don't recall hearing that those had a lot of problems (ditto for Honda and Toyota). Maybe the GM CVT was just overstressed behind a 2 liter engine.

I was actually satisfied with the Vue for the first 3 years I owned it. I did have to take it in to have the CVT programmed during that time, but as long as I was the principal driver it seemed OK. However, after my Son started driving, the CVT didn't last three months. Neither did the horn, or several other items. My final conclusion was that the Vue was designed for little old lady school teachers.

Ed

Leonardo DaVinci sketched the first CVT in 1490. DAF (the Netherlands) was the first to have CVTs in the cars they built. I would like to own one of those old DAF cars, a DAF Daffodil car.

Well, we did get 90k out of the first one.....not a record....but yes, it is time for it to go.

Followups set because you post to a.a.h and then dumped it for a followup.

Thus spake chuckcar :

When you say ROM you mean PROM, right? One doesn't "flash" ROM, one fabs it. As in a ROM is hard silicon with no programmable features.

Thus spake "Stewart" :

It is quite possible that the fault lay not in the part but in the instalation. Say a harness connection that wasn't 100% solid or some such. Do you know for absolute fact that the replacement replacement really was a "new" (likely rebuilt) tranny? It could also have been an issue of a bad rebuild.

Dillon Pyron wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

I stopped doing followup-to headers in this group with a short number of groups at the request of another poster here - specifically the very person I was replying to. Three groups that are pretty closely related is not something one needs to worry about in that regard anyways IMHO.

The term ROM refers to EAPROMS, PROMS (that you erase with UV light) and hardwired ROMS that can't be erased. PROMS can only be written to by completely erasing them and re-writing the whole ROM. That's completely different from RAM, where you can modify any byte or bit.