Engine Belts And Pulleys problems of the 2002 Toyota RAV4

I purchased a new 2002 Toyota rav 4 in 2002. Last year, a few years after the purchase date, Toyota had a recall for the check engine light. I took it back to the dealer and the light was fixed. Maybe a year or two after, the light began to come on and has stayed off and on for years. Last year, my truck began to "hesitate" while driving and finally it began to stop all together. I took it to a transmission shop and an air conditioner belt was replaced and the agent told me that he could not find a problem with it. For a day or two, I had no problems with the truck. But shortly after, the problem came back and I was stuck without transportation. I was told it was a $2,500 computer engine problem. I do not have that kind of money. So, I had to rent a car. My insurance would not pay rentals. Externally, it is a beautiful truck, even today. But, internally, it completely let me down. When I purchased my truck, I thought I was getting a dependable truck that would last for years after it was paid off. I paid off the car in January of this year and it is sitting in front of my house. How bad can this get? my truck has over 140,000 miles which according to my research, exceeds warranty dates. If the repair cost is high, I will have no other choice but to try to sell the truck. I went out and bought an american made used car the other day. It cannot compare with my Toyota when it was in good condition. Now I am back in debt again. This time I got a three year warranty. To make a long story short, I am so disappointed in the Toyota Rav4 trucks. According to the web, a lot of us are.

I purchased a 2002 Toyota Rav4. SUV. And within the first six months of owning it, my drive belt broke and almost caused me to wreck and hit three other vehicles. I had my new car towed back to the dealership where I had purchased the vehicle and they told me that the drive belt was not covered under my warranty. A few months later I noticed that my transmission was making a weird grinding sound and was hard to shift. Sometimes the car would not shift and it would come to a complete stop and this almost caused me to wreck via hitting other vehicles or other vehicles hitting me. I took it to my dealership and told them that they had sold me a lemon and I wanted to know if they would give me another Rav4, that is dependable. They told me no. I let the rav 4 sit in my garage for two years and my brother-in-law said that if he could find a used transmission from a wrecked vehicle then he would install it in my rav 4. He found a transmission and I had to pay in cash $1,300. 00 for the transmission and I gave him $400. 00 to install the transmission. Recently I found out that Toyota has recalled 2001, 2002 and 2003 Toyota Rav4 SUV's for transmission problems. I contacted the Toyota sales USA about their recalls of my vehicle and they told me that they were not going to do anything for me. I feel that Toyota should reimburse me for the cost of buying a used transmission and for paying to have the transmission put in my Rav4suv. Please advise.

On July 7, 2003 I was on my way to work when the battery discharge light came on and I had no steering capability. I was travelling about sixty miles per hour on the interstate. I almost hit the median divider before I could steer the vehicle to the side of the road. I called the dearlership and explained what had happened. They told me to have the vehicle towed in, they didn't even offer to have it towed. Incidentally this is a new vehicle with less than 1100 miles on it and I had only driven the vehicle about one week before the above happened. The dealership kept my vehicle for two days and I went to get my Rav4 and asked what had happened. The service manager said that the drive belt pulleys had not been properly installed on my new Rav4 and that caused the drive belt to come off of the pulleys and broke the tensioner and the housing guide. I took the car home and the next morning, the new Rav4 would not start. I jumped srtarted the Rav4 from my wifes vehicle and let it run for about fifteen minutes thinking that the battery just needed a charge. My wife was going to use the neew Rav4 vehicle that day to shop. She called me about mid-morning and informed me that the new Rav4 vehicle would not start as she had gone to the mall. That evening my wife and I went to the mall and jum started the vehicle agin and I finally got it home and it is now in my garage, it just will not start. I called and talaked to the service director about all of the problems that I was having with my new Rav4 SUV. He equated my break-downs to going to the store and buying a box of four light bulbs and taking the light bulbs home and putting a new light bulb in a lamp that had a burned out light bulb and when the lamp is turned on then the new light bulb burns out. This really made me angry. I told him that there was big difference in a fifty cent light bulb and a $25,000. 00 new vehicle with only 1100 miles on it.