Oil Pump Problems of Toyota Highlander

2009 Highlander, purchased new, had 105000 miles on 3. 5l v6 engine. Oil changed every 7000 miles, fully synthetic. No warning lights or engine noises prior to incident. Car started after work, drove . 6 mile. Started running very rough, pulled over to shoulder thinking I had a flat tire. Car died before finishing maneuver, coasted to shoulder. Engine would not start. Towed to repair shop, they diagnosed "engine fully seized up". Contacted Toyota, they offered no satisfaction as " car not being repaired by dealer, not under warranty". I find this answer to be wrong, due to low mileage, history of maintenance, no reason for catastrophic failure of engine. Mechanic stated theory of "oil ports clogging up", since heard theory of "oil pump failure".

See all problems of the 2009 Toyota Highlander 🔎.

Toyota's t-sb-0201-1 should trigger a recall!! my wife was driving her '08 Highlander, with 2 CO-worker passengers, to a funeral. On 95n in danvers, MA, a motor biker pulled alongside & flagged my wife to pull over ASAP as there was smoke coming from the engine compartment and under the car. After stopping the car & waiting for the smoke to dissipate,he checked & found there was no longer any oil in the engine, the oil had emptied from the engine the last few miles while on the highway. I arrived later that morning to investigate, to discover that the oil was below the dipstick. The bottom of the engine & entire underside of the vehicle, including the exhaust system, spare tire, wheel wells, right wheels & tires & rear liftgate were coated in engine oil. The smoke apparently was from oil splashing onto the hot exhaust system, & vaporizing due to the high temp, creating a potential fire hazard. We had the car towed to the nearest Toyota dealership. They determined that an oil cooler line external to the engine - part of a towing option package the car has - had ruptured! the engine's oil had been pumped out by the oil pump. We have since discovered that Toyota had issued a technical service bulletin - t-sb-0201-11 - in December 2011 which addressed "oil seepage" from this exact oil line. Now we are $480 poorer, & we could have experienced a $10 k engine failure due to seizing, & possible injury or loss of life due to this. This TSB was never performed on our car as we had never seen spotting in our driveway from this leak. The new part installed was redesigned as solid metal tubing to fix the original rubber hose with clamps. Instead of recalling all of the affected vehicles to replace this potential life taker, Toyota simply swept it under the rug and only replaced them when someone saw a leak and only when they still were below their 36,ooo mileage warranty. Crazy!.

See all problems of the 2008 Toyota Highlander 🔎.

The SUV was out of coolant & water and my husband take the car to the dealer to check this problem and for regular maintenance (the car only has received service at the dealer, except for tires). The diagnostic was that the shock block has it threads separated from the screws (or bolts). The engine has to be removed in order to change the shock block. The repair has cost $4701. 31, because it was also recommended to change the oil pump. Previous to this repair, the SUV was taken to the dealer because there was a recall to reprogram its computer because the check engine light turned on (this happened twice). We have a full record in the dealer of all maintenance checks and repairs the SUV had.

See all problems of the 2003 Toyota Highlander 🔎.