Potential Cause of rumored GR86’s blown engine? Seal packing(RTV) was peeled off

[NoHaveMSG]

Originally Posted by Aon

Providing a summary of my situation via a copy-paste of my Facebook post.

That’s pretty fucked up.

[LRNAD90]

It's time to Lawyer up..

[Spektyr]

Originally Posted by Tcoat

For the money involved it just may be worth talking to a lawyer. Usually first consultation is free.

Yep. On a lot of things simply having a lawyer send them a letter will change their tune.

Toyota has full-time lawyers, but even though the ones on payroll are a "sunk cost" they still track hours and expenses, so it will "cost" Toyota money to fight your lawyer.

There's a good chance that they'll look at it and decide that even if they win, they lose money and just do the repair to make the problem go away.

[Kamber]

Originally Posted by Tcoat

There is just as much chance of a Subaru dealer denying for the exact same reasons. It isn’t just a Toyota thing.
Like the recall failures there were more dealers that fixed it than didn’t but some just refused.
For the money involved it just may be worth talking to a lawyer. Usually first consultation is free.

You’re right, my previous statement of Subaru being an entity to make a customer whole is definitely not a given and nor to be expected, that was indeed wishful thinking on my part haha. I agree that there is of course a significant chance of being shafted by either brand, and dealers are not your friend nor an entity to expect much from to begin with. Nonetheless, from the extremely small anecdotal sample size I’ve seen of people posting their experiences of engine related failures online between the two GR86 forums, I’m lead to subjectively believe that I have an overall better chance of achieving a positive outcome from a Subaru of America than Toyota of America if I were to experience engine failure on a daily driver due to RTV bullshit or other manufacture / design issues.

Funnily enough, there is a gentleman on the other forum who has a BRZ and for some inexplicable reason chose to do seven track days on the same fill of OEM 0w-20 oil without changing it; unsurprisingly, his engine failed. Shockingly, Subaru of America decided to cover it out of good will, despite the track use and oil blunder being disclosed. This is of course a lonely sample size of but one. However, compare that to Toyota of Japan and Toyota of America outright denying claims without investigation, citing “track use” as the reason, when they laughably PROVIDE a free track day to each customer, and outright trying to fuck people over by digging through their social medias to find evidence of track or drift usage to deny claims while refusing to send a regional technician out to examine the failure - it becomes clear that one brand may have a more supportive attitude than the other. I understand that a couple of the Toyota denials that were posted about online recently may have been in fact have been perfectly reasonable due to user error or miss-use being involved in the reason for failure - this still pales in stark contrast to the couple feel-good experiences I’ve read about Subaru recently; the one listed above, among others.

I’m actually starting to warm up to the BRZ bumper, however even if not, I’d rather buy a BRZ and get a GR front bumper for it than roll the dice with Toyota even if price and availability between the two were to be exactly the same, which they are not. In fact, the mandatory “magic nano snake oil” paint protection package that I would be forced to buy with the car at seemingly every Toyota dealership would cover the cost of a bumper, AND I’d have a spare BRZ OEM bumper to boot! Looking at it through that lens, since I’m not a fan of the red interior stitching on the BRZ, I could put a few thousand towards aftermarket seats instead of burning that cash on a Toyota dealership’s mark up. Anyway, apologies for the rant, I digress…

[diga]

Originally Posted by Petah78

Care to expand? Your engine is toast and at the dealer being looked at? Mileage?

just to be clear, I'm referencing the issue being discussed in this thread (RTV blockage), I am NOT personally experiencing a blown engine.


The point of my reply is to pose the question of whether or not Toyota/Subaru has access to GPS data which can then be used to deny warranty claims if it's determined the failure happened at a known race track/autox location.

[NoHaveMSG]

Originally Posted by diga

just to be clear, I'm referencing the issue being discussed in this thread (RTV blockage), I am NOT personally experiencing a blown engine.


The point of my reply is to pose the question of whether or not Toyota/Subaru has access to GPS data which can then be used to deny warranty claims if it's determined the failure happened at a known race track/autox location.

Yet they were offering a free nasa track day and 1 year nasa membership with purchase of a GR86 for a while

[Tcoat]

Originally Posted by Kamber

You’re right, my previous statement of Subaru being an entity to make a customer whole is definitely not a given and nor to be expected, that was indeed wishful thinking on my part haha. I agree that there is of course a significant chance of being shafted by either brand, and dealers are not your friend nor an entity to expect much from to begin with. Nonetheless, from the extremely small anecdotal sample size I’ve seen of people posting their experiences of engine related failures online between the two GR86 forums, I’m lead to subjectively believe that I have an overall better chance of achieving a positive outcome from a Subaru of America than Toyota of America if I were to experience engine failure on a daily driver due to RTV bullshit or other manufacture / design issues.

Funnily enough, there is a gentleman on the other forum who has a BRZ and for some inexplicable reason chose to do seven track days on the same fill of OEM 0w-20 oil without changing it; unsurprisingly, his engine failed. Shockingly, Subaru of America decided to cover it out of good will, despite the track use and oil blunder being disclosed. This is of course a lonely sample size of but one. However, compare that to Toyota of Japan and Toyota of America outright denying claims without investigation, citing “track use” as the reason, when they laughably PROVIDE a free track day to each customer, and outright trying to fuck people over by digging through their social medias to find evidence of track or drift usage to deny claims while refusing to send a regional technician out to examine the failure - it becomes clear that one brand may have a more supportive attitude than the other. I understand that a couple of the Toyota denials that were posted about online recently may have been in fact have been perfectly reasonable due to user error or miss-use being involved in the reason for failure - this still pales in stark contrast to the couple feel-good experiences I’ve read about Subaru recently; the one listed above, among others.

I’m actually starting to warm up to the BRZ bumper, however even if not, I’d rather buy a BRZ and get a GR front bumper for it than roll the dice with Toyota even if price and availability between the two were to be exactly the same, which they are not. In fact, the mandatory “magic nano snake oil” paint protection package that I would be forced to buy with the car at seemingly every Toyota dealership would cover the cost of a bumper, AND I’d have a spare BRZ OEM bumper to boot! Looking at it through that lens, since I’m not a fan of the red interior stitching on the BRZ, I could put a few thousand towards aftermarket seats instead of burning that cash on a Toyota dealership’s mark up. Anyway, apologies for the rant, I digress…

Don’t know about the other forum but here there are two North America reports one was covered and Inez was not so Toyota stands with a 50% accepted rate.
Dealers are not inherently evil and most of the time will work with people. Part of the issue is that they do indeed get a lot of warranty claims on cars that have been heavily modded or abused so some get a bit gun shy.
There is also that great internet deception of only hearing the horror stories while the good news ones remain silent. Could be a hundred dealers replace engines no questions asked and never know it while the five that weren’t are yelling and screaming all over different sites making it look like a massive issue. That was certainly the case with the recall debacle where when the real data was pulled together the denied repairs were only a small percentage.
I personally would never pay markup anyway. Every person that does validates the practice and just makes it worse.

[DylanJZA]

my understanding is that the car absolutely has gps telemetrics on at all times. I can see where my car is at all times within the Toyota app, so clearly it has that ability.

I doubt there's much they cant see tbh.

[DylanJZA]

my understanding is that the car absolutely has gps telemetrics on at all times. I can see where my car is at all times within the Toyota app, so clearly it has that ability.

I doubt there's much they cant see tbh.

[Teseo]

Originally Posted by Aon

Providing a summary of my situation via a copy-paste of my Facebook post.

Ahh... the old days when Mitsubishi did the same with Evo's (VII-VIII-IX).They scattered in dragstrips with notepads

[Chrisz5z]

Give us a free day of racing so you can deny us a warranty...looks like a trap.

[mycrors7]

Has there been notable BRZ failures with the RTV issue? It seems so far that all the documented RTV related failures worldwide have been on a GR86.

[Kamber]

Originally Posted by Tcoat

Don’t know about the other forum but here there are two North America reports one was covered and Inez was not so Toyota stands with a 50% accepted rate.
Dealers are not inherently evil and most of the time will work with people. Part of the issue is that they do indeed get a lot of warranty claims on cars that have been heavily modded or abused so some get a bit gun shy.
There is also that great internet deception of only hearing the horror stories while the good news ones remain silent. Could be a hundred dealers replace engines no questions asked and never know it while the five that weren’t are yelling and screaming all over different sites making it look like a massive issue. That was certainly the case with the recall debacle where when the real data was pulled together the denied repairs were only a small percentage.
I personally would never pay markup anyway. Every person that does validates the practice and just makes it worse.

Absolutely agree with there being a heavy negativity bias skewing what we hear when it comes to these kind of things. I too refuse to pay markup, so it’s a nice consolation that I can order a BRZ now’ish without markup despite having a preference for the Toyota front bumper and grey interior stitching. Otherwise I’d probably be searching for a unicorn of a Toyota dealership for a longgg while to come.

Originally Posted by mycrors7

Has there been notable BRZ failures with the RTV issue? It seems so far that all the documented RTV related failures worldwide have been on a GR86.

All Toyota so far from what I’ve seen shared online between the US and Japanese markets. The only Subaru engine failures I’ve read of were due to negligence or user-induced and were not linked to RTV clogging. It wil be interesting to see if a bore scope can reach the strainer through the oil pan to check for RTV chunks - if so, we’ll be able to deduce a lot more over time about what manufacture dates were affected. Hopefully it is contained to a small run of cars from a particular period DOM and not a wider spread issue.

[Ultramaroon]

Originally Posted by Tcoat

I personally would never pay markup anyway. Every person that does validates the practice and just makes it worse.

You do, but it's in donuts.