Along with my recall notice for the accelerator pedal fix was another notice for the replacement of the VVT-i (Variable Valve Timing with Intelligence) oil hose. At least it's for certain 2008 Avalon's equipped with the V6 (2GR-FE) engine.
"The rubber portion of the oil supply hose for the VVT-i actuator may degrade over time. This condition may cause oil to leak from the VVT-i hose producing abnormal engine noise and the oil pressure light to illuminate.
This is a limited service campaign and free replacement of the hose will be officered until Mar 31st.
AFAIK, it just came out today. I wonder who made those hoses.
And, are we beginning to see a trend here?? Some of these troublesome parts - the GM steering motors, GM lower manifolds, the Toyota pedals, Ford switches, and so on - may point to another serious area of quality>>>
In the end I buy cars from Toyota, Ford, GM, etc.. It is their job to make sure the parts they put into the cars I buy are good parts.
Unfortunately I see this trend with lots of companies. Instead of doing proper incoming inspection, companies depend on written quality reports from the suppliers. It is no longer good enough to put items out for bid and then buy parts from the supplier with the best combination of quality and price. Now companies buy from the lowest bidder and then constantly brow beat them into providing the parts at even lower prices. Companies are increasingly turning the design responsibility over to the vendors and the actual physically testing is minimized in favor of vendor reports and virtual testing. Test organization in companies have been cut as "non-productive" cost centers.
I've seen even worse...Company farming out the design and production of a product to another company that it turns farms the job over to a third Chinese or Indian supplier.
In my opinion many big companies are trying to figure out how to get out of building things, they just want to sell things that somebody else makes for them.
Do you remember the article from last year where Toyota bragged about how they were going to cut cost by forcing their suppliers to reduce what the supplier were charging for the parts. They claimed that this wasn't going to effect quality. Sure. I wonder how much CTS had to cut the cost of pedal assemblies over the last five years to keep from losing the Toyota business?
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