Dealership won't fix 2012 TSB about the cricket noise on my 2013 FR-S
 

They're gonna need some repair expert higher up in the chain than the ones working there to test my car, saying a 2013 solution should not be applied to a 2012 problem.

Got my DRLs turned off along the way, waiting for them to pick me up from my house..

What should I tell the dealer?

A 2012 problem? What does that mean?

Your original statement is not written clearly.

Tell them that there was a TSB and that you havent had your fuel pump changed. If they keep giving you trouble either ask for service manager and that you have heard from other people that they need video proof of the problem and that you need it fixed, they have too under warranty. Personally, i would go to a different dealership that isnt soo damn stubborn on replacing parts under warranty. Also let them know that the fuel pump hasnt ever been fixed and even Scion USA has said that.... Fuel pump will be the same that you have now so replacing it will have it under control for about a week and then itll come back..... use Chevron or Shell everytime after they replace part also

Typing this in the dealership..

Service guy told me the issue is for 2012 FRS only, it should not apply to 2013 (the TSB is marked 2012). Anyway, he wants me to come back on a weekday when the parts foreman or something is here to further inspect the noise.

Ask to talk to the service manager when you go back.
It appears there is a training opportunity for that "service guy."

Pretty sure there wasn't a 2012 FRS...

There is no 2012 FR-S.
Maybe the service guy means the VIN needs to be less than 709026.

The TSB might be dated 2012 but it pertains to the 2013 FR-S that began production in 2012. There was no 2012 FR-S.

I'm actually going to bring my can in next week to have the fuel pump replaced for the second time because of the chirping. Find someone else to take it to if your current dealer won't do it.

Have they actually reconfigured the pump or fixed what is failing in it or are they still just throwing faulty equipment at the problem like the taillights?

Try a different dealer. I don't get some dealers, its a free warranty claim for them. Just missing out on free $$$.

Only certain VIN numbers are listed.. So yours probably does not fall in the range for the TSB.. Mine has a Feb build date.. And it chirps.. So what?
I have heard other DI systems make similar noises and they are all normal..
I heard an Audi and a Chevy making similar noises.. And not all the time.. Just like our cars..
Don't worry about it.. Ur warranty is good for some years..

Another crack head service "advisor". My suggestion? Find yourself another dealership.

Subaru ordered one and informed me after my free oil change. I knew I had crickets but didn't care. My service guy cared more and setup an appointment once part is in. These scion dealers suck balls

I wouldn't say that. Just like anything in life, there are good and there are bad. I've had some horrid experience from my local Subaru dealership as well. Now, I make that extra distance to go visit a more "reputable" dealer for my BRZ.

Again, OP should find himself another dealership for this problem.

I have read more negative postings about scion dealerships not wanting to service cars. Granted more frs's are sold generating more responses but it seems like a general overall negativity. Not to mention "these" dealerships refers to the aforementioned in this thread. Not all dealerships. Apologies if I was unclear

Decided to just hold on to it until a proper fix is issued. No sense wasting time getting my car serviced if the issue will surely come back again.

On another note, I got my DRL's disabled successfully without it affecting the high beams or other electrical stuff.

I brought mine in to the Toyota dealer a few weeks ago and they had no problem ordering the parts and fixing it. It is a known TSB and it is a free repair so I don't see why you wouldn't go and get it fixed unless a few hours in the shop are just not possible. I will keep bringing it back until they are gone.

IMO I see no point in replacing it, its the same part and the chirping comes back and does no harm anyway. I guess they do it so people feel like something was done :iono:

If you don't mind driving down to San Diego, I am more than happy to take care of it for you. I have replaced mine twice, as well as another customers, and have a 4th on order for someone else. It is a problem with the pump, specifically a manufacturing process problem. There are date codes on the pumps that tell you exactly when it was made. The first fix didn't fix it, which is why it came back for a lot of people, including myself. I have not had the newest "revision" make noise. The TSB has been updated since it first came out, which also extended the VIN ranges for those affected.

My car was built well after this was supposed to be solved, and it still popped up after less than 200 miles on the odometer. Hanson Subaru in Olympia, WA asked me to send them a copy of the TSB and immediately got on the phone to confirm and order parts. It's taking awhile to get them in, but they're doing the work!

The TSB doesn't solve anything anyway. Don't even bother wasting your time with it.

I would just thank the tech for not wasting your time on something that they have to special order that you'll have to wait for till it arrives, then come back to the dealer and wait again to have a working part replaced with the same part. I suggest seeing some direct injection cars and listen, coz they have the same cricket noise under the hood, even a kia with GDI makes the cricket noise. If you dont hear the cricket noise, then bring it to the dealer coz you DI is not working.

i was told the cricket noise is due to crappy gas...well not crappy, just ethanol in the gas. i heard 93 ethanol free fixes it. i put 92 ethanol free since its the only thing that was by me and i think it works.

You may want to do it just so it shows up in the service data base that you had issues with it. This is in case it becomes a bigger issue in the future. I had a manufacturing defect on another brand of car which I had not problem getting fixed even after the warranty had expired because I had several documented visits to the dealer for the problem while it was under warranty. It took Cadillac 5 years to finally admit that it was a real problem with the way certain parts were made. I ended up getting the parts replaced plus a check in the mail for repairs that I had performed myself during the time I owned the car.

ignore the chirp. Drive the crap out of your car for 10k miles and it will go away.

On these cars you mention, did they make the noise from the very first time the engine started? Or was it like the twins where the noise came after hundreds if not thousands of miles?

According to you, our DI was broken the first few hundred or thousand miles and only began working "properly" like all the others after it unbroke itself?

I had the exact opposite experience, I took my car in for another issue and they asked if they could keep it to replace the fuel pump to fix the cricket noise. Only bad thing is for some reason its taken over a week simply to get parts in...still walking around without a car 7 days later.

Toyota leans extremely hard on dealerships to not perform warranty repairs unless absolutely necessary. If a TSB exists for a concern and a VIN range is specified, Toyota will oftentimes decline to authorize payment for a warranty repair.

Dealerships do not have carte blanche to throw parts at cars and have Toyota corporate pay for them. "Free $$$" for the dealer actually isn't that much money either since they have to buy the part from Toyota, charge minimal mark-up and Toyota warranty labor times are very low compared to normal customer pay warranty times. For example.. it might cost a customer 1.5 hours to have a water pump changed but Toyota will only pay .8 hours.

Toyota has, in the past, cracked down on specific dealers that performed lots of warranty repairs and audited those dealers previous repairs as well, charging the dealership back when they found improper documentation of Complaint/Cause/Repair (aka CC&R) or even missing "mileage out" on repair orders. They get very nitpicky.. They are a business and businesses do not make money by giving stuff away.

I see the issue here as the dealership being deceptive. There is no 2012 FR-S, only 2013 FR-S. As long as the car falls within the VIN range, the TSB applies. If the car doesn't fall within the VIN range he can talk to Toyota/Scion Corporate about it.

Good. Everyone with even an ounce of auto knowledge knows that the books used to determine labor hours are exaggerated by a factor of 2-3 times! If your statement is correct, they're still making profit from unspent labor hours than needed.

My point is, the cricket noise is just like the whinning noise the super charger makes, the woosh noise the blow-off valve makes or that clunk on a diesel engine. There is nothing wrong with the car, just get used to it.

Other cars with direct injection has the cricket noise also, maybe not all, or not in other places(higher octane gas?), but when I heared it on a kia w/di, and even on a lexus is(not sure is 250 or 350) that was idling, I was preety much convinced.

Some or most of us here is new to Direct-Injection technology, preety much the first car owned w/Direct injection, so we wear some thing not normal does not mean something is broken or something is wrong.

:coolpics: Hold on.....I found a picture of a 2012 FR-S:..

Attachment 37274

wait...what.......that's not a 2012?

While I will agree that DI engines are far noisier than standard Port Injection, if there was not an abnormal noise coming from it, Toyota would have never released a TSB/ would have told everyone the noise is normal/ would not have spent how many dollars trying to come up with a fix for it. All the info I have gotten about the noise is that during intial assembly of the pumps, a certain part was not indexed correctly, cause the fuel to not route itself as intended causing the noise. There was nothing ever wrong with the design of the pump, hence the part number never changed. There were just defective when they were built.

It's an inherent flaw in how many mechanics are paid (flat rate/per job). It's a high-skill trade, they have to provide their own tools and maintain knowledge. You're not just paying a mechanic for his or her time to perform service, you're paying for all of that, too. Kind of like how you're not paying a wedding photographer just to snap photos, you're paying for their skill, their high-end equipment, travel expenses and suchlike.

Further, warranty times are typically times that are so low that they assume the technician in question has done the repair before/knows each step of the repair exactly. In the case of new models and low-volume models (both of which the FR-S is), a technician is going to be doing pretty much any repair for the first time. To make matters worse (for Scion owners, anyway..), the FR-S is virtually all Subaru and very little about it crosses over to Toyota in terms of maintenance familiarity.

Having said all that it's not surprising that a dealership would want to avoid unnecessary warranty repairs on an FR-S at all costs.

Yea, I've heard all that before. The solution is simple, raise the price on the hourly rate rather than lying about how long it took.

And here's why your statement is false: has anyone here actually gotten a "refund" on the unspent labor hours when the job did in fact take multiple times less than the book quoted? I think the answer is going to be a unanimous NO.

They claim it takes 3 hours, they call you back with the car ready to pick up after 1 hour...you still paid for all 3. Obviously it didn't take 3 if it was done in 1...so why do they charge the full amount? Because the book is full of shit! It was written with a first time mechanic using hand tools AND taking both a shit and lunch break in mind...working out of a broken garage.

Great story, relevant to this but not the OP so sorry.

Dad's F150 was running poorly, would die while cruising out on the freeway. Temporary solution was to pull over, let the car sit for about five minutes and dust off the air filter. Went to a dealership since they treated us well under warranty with little things and the diagnoses was "#x coil pack is dead, needs replacement" (coil pack had something to do with the spark plugs iirc)

Cost to fix? $600-$900 bucks, (can't remember it was almost a decade ago).

How'd they diagnose it? They pulled each coil pack individually and replaced it with a new one until the truck was running properly.

How much did the diagnoses cost? $60

Laughed, drove it home, bought a coil pack at Craigens and a couple weird extensions to get around the stuff in the engine bay for less than $100 and did it over the weekend. He's done it 2-3 times since then on his own.
:burnrubber:

i thought it was decided among the forums that ethanol free gas was the only solution to this

It's a standardized labor time. If you do a job 100 times you're going to get really good at it. Why should you punish the skilled technician working on your car for being good at what he does?

Real world example: It pays ~3.5 hours to change the timing belt on a lot of Toyota cars/trucks/vans/SUVs/etc. If I set you up in my garage at home with the factory repair manual and all of my tools (yes, even air tools), do you think you could change the timing belt in my Camry in 3.5 hours?

This includes:
- walking to the back yard to get the repair order (like walking to the office in a professional shop)
- walking to the front yard to get parts
- going across the street and halfway down the block to get the car, pulling it into the garage
- doing all the work, not screwing it up or getting the car dirty
- road-testing the car
- filling out paperwork
- walking back to the garage to begin your next job

I can do most Toyota timing belts in under an hour. Because I've done them a zillion times before. Does that mean I should only charge an hour of time for my expertise?

And for the record, when it comes to diagnosis, I often don't use up the full estimate when it's something ridiculously fast/simple like a loose gas cap. YMMV, everyone's different.