Transmission Gear Slipping Problems of Toyota RAV4 - part 2

When driving my 2003 Toyota Rav4, the transmission slipped at about 20mph. I was about to enter an interception, and a 18 wheel truck, started to make a turn in front of me. I was unable to proceed, and narrowly missed the truck hitting me head-on. Competition Toyota of middle iland, NY put a new ecm in for $1400, but the trans. Continued to slip. I spent $5,700+ on a rebuilt transmission from jasper corp. , but I was with-out a vehicle for 7 weeks.

See all problems of the 2003 Toyota RAV4 🔎.

My vehicle began to have trouble the night before the incident. Traveling on the freeway I noticed rough shifting, a chug between 2nd and 3rd gear. I dismissed it until the next morning driving to work. That morning, loud clunk when I shifted to reverse, then in 1st gear there was slipping before it finally engaged. On the way to work the car would lurch ahead then stall in 1st 2nd and 3rd gear. Barely made it to parking at work. After work, on the day of the incident I ventured on the roads again trying to make my way to Toyota repair. I nearly stalled in the middle of at least 3 intersections and cars backed up behind me. I was leery about getting into the left hand turn lane. Finally off the road, the car crept into the repair shop. The dealer service center replaced the trans ecu (description below): 89661-42812 computer, engine con they returned the old part to me with this part number: 89661-42810 this old part was identified as being defective and a service bulletin was sent out to service centers, but not to consumers. I believe the old part is a safety hazard and could lead to more serious incidents than mine. Why aren't these defective parts being recalled?.

See all problems of the 2002 Toyota RAV4 🔎.

2002 Toyota Rav4 shifting erratically and slipping while driving. Began last month with only 39k miles on car. Brought to dealer and they replaced ecm under warranty but refused to also replace transmission which had been damaged due to faulty ecm. (see TSB number:00206 NHTSA number:10019667). Dealer returned vehicle. But transmission began to slip worse and worse each day right after. It was now extremely unsafe to drive. Within 1 week the car would not accelerate over 20mph. Multiple times we almost had accidents while pulling into traffic. Car returned to dealer for $300k+ repair of transmission. This is a known problem since at least 2006 and Toyota has failed to notify any customers. Hundreds have complained of the problem but many unsafe cars remain on the road today as a result. . Read more...

It transmission gears seems slipping when going from 1st gear to 2nd. Sometimes it was like horse riding jumping. It happened twice when I was doing a left turn and almost got into accident with the coming vehicle. I was told the problem is the ecu and transmission problems.

See all problems of the 2009 Toyota RAV4 🔎.

The transmission started slipping and there was a lack of acceleration after coming to a complete stop. Once the car would finally accelerate, it would bang into gear. The transmission issue is a know problem with the 2002 Toyota Rav4's and Toyota is refusing to do anything about it if the car has over 80,000 miles on it.

Yesterday, 2002 Toyota Rav4 transmission began to slip and hesitate jeopardizing passenger safety. I understand Toyota issued TSB 00206 but chose not to recall or otherwise inform customers. Further I understand replacement ecm is over $1,000 and a transmission rebuild may cost nearly $4,500. Toyota evidently is unwilling to correct or otherwise offer financial assistance to correct this dangerous defect.

My 2003 Toyota Rav4 sometimes stalls in traffic, due to what seems like the transmission slipping. The engine races for a while, then the transmission will catch and the car will surge forward. There is no pattern to when this happens.

In 2006 my transmission just disintergrated with 103000 miles, had it rebuilt the transmission shop said that the computer was not doing it's job than come to find out that Toyota had a TSB on it and never notified anyone. Now about in March of 2009 at about 145000 miles 2nd to 3rd gear started to slip again. Now so this is my second time I'm having this problem it seems I can't get more than 100,000. Sad these should last longer, at this rate $3500. 00 each four years, someone is making $$$$$. Thanks.

The transmission on my 2005 Toyota Rav4 has begun to slip. I have maintained the vehicle in accordance to the prescribed maintenance schedule and have had most of the services performed at a Toyota dealership. The transmission slips approximately once a week, always at speeds below 40. Today I was entering a freeway and I heard the transmission slip. The car immediately lost propulsion, slowing to a dangerous speed for an acceleration ramp, and I was afraid that I was going to be rear-ended. I have done internet research and see that this is a very common problem with these vehicles. I have contacted Toyota's corporate office and been told that there is no recall. I have contacted the dealership that I've had most of my services done; they recommended that I have the computer on the transmission reset, at a cost of approximately $125. I'm afraid that the transmission is going to fail completely, or that a slip/disengagement is going to cause me to be in an accident.

See all problems of the 2005 Toyota RAV4 🔎.

2001 Toyota Rav4 4wd car has not had any problems until recently when the transmission started acting up. It is very intermittent. When starting from a stopped position or getting onto a freeway the car will loose its power. The transmission slips, jerks, and engine speeds up without car properly accelerating. Very dangerous situation because you cannot merge with traffic, can?t get out of the way of other vehicles once the car enters an intersection, or could get rear ended by other vehicles. I can drive the car for a couple of days without the problem showing up. Had it in to my mechanic twice and they can?t reproduce it to fix it. No problems show up on the computer check. When it does happen it might only happen once when starting out from a stop and then be fine for many days or miles. I cannot make it do it. After researching this problem on the internet I have learned it is a defective design problem with the ecm module that controls the transmission. Toyota has issued a technical service bulletin dated March 6, 2006. They have not notified owners of the problem.

See all problems of the 2001 Toyota RAV4 🔎.

The contact owns a 2003 Toyota rav 4. The contact noticed that the vehicle skipped gears when she attempted to shift from 1 to 2 or 3 to 4. The gear slippage increased the risk of a vehicle crash. The vehicle was taken to a dealer and a technician concluded that there were no problems with the transmission. No repairs have been made. The current and failure mileages were 98800.

My transmission started slipping and bucking in Aug. 2009. The car would loose power and almost stall out. While driving on the highway I came close to being rear ended due to loss of power. I had taken my car in to have it looked at and was told that I didn't have codes so they could not tell me what the problem was and would have to wait for it to happen again or bring it back what the check engine light came on. Before I left the lot the light came on and the code p0755 was the code used to repair the car. This however did not fix the problem, and I began to do some research and it seems that this has been an issue for many others with a 2001-2003 Rav4. I called the Toyota company and was told that this is a known issue, but because my car was out of warranty they would not help fix the issue. Due to the fact that this is the only car I have and needed to go to work I had no choice but to pay to get the car repaired. I feel that this is an issue that Toyota needs to address along with the current issues they are having with the recall models now. Just because no one has died from this issue does not mean no one will, if the owner does not know about the problem and are driving on the highway with their families in the car with them.

2001 Toyota Rav4 has transmission slippage/harsh shifting. Manufacturer defect in ecu is well known but Toyota will not replace defective item. Anyone driving this model is in a "ticking time bomb" for transmission failure. If it happens at speed, there will be death/injury incurred. Information was in n. Y. Times on 8/26/2009 article. I am the owner of this vehicle and want to be added to the NHTSA list of complaints/concerns about this well known defect. Request agency pressure Toyota to recall/replace ecu/ecm/transmission as needed on every operational Rav4 in the 2001-2003 range. Toyota issued a technical service bulletin tc002-06 on March 3, 2006 advising service managers to replace ecm/transmissions. . "only if customer complains" this is a devious way of avoiding an outright notification/recall and I request your good agency help owners like me who are endangering their families/them selves & the general public on our roads. I am a licensed driving instructor in the state of connecticut and will make everyone I know aware of this dangerous situation with a Toyota product. Your assistance is appreciated.

The contact owns a 2002 Toyota Rav4. While driving between 45-50 mph the transmission exhibited gear shifting failure. The vehicle was taken to an authorized dealer for inspection. The technician concluded that the transmission had slipped gears,therefore the vehicle was repaired. After the repair the failure resurfaced. The vehicle was taken back to the dealer and repaired. However none of the repairs have remedied the failures. The failure mileage was 82,000. The current mileage was 83,000.

I have a 2002 Rav4 and the transmission is slipping gears. The car stalls upon takeoff and it is very dangerous. I pulled out into traffic with my son in the car and the car wouldn't take off. We were almost hit in the side.

I bought my 2001 Toyota rav 4 in 2004. In July 2009, my transmission started slipping and bucking. I have done some research and it seems that this has been an issue for many others with a 2001-2003 Rav4. It is terrifying to drive this vehicle but it's all I have. It would cost me more to replace the transmission than it would to just pay it off. I am concerned that I will have an accident, as I do a lot of commuting. I am so disappointed that I have invested so much money in the maintenance of this unreliable vehicle. I heard about Toyota's recall on the news yesterday and I am disgusted that Toyota has not addressed this issue. This should be as pertinent as a faulty accelerator. I bought my Toyota because I had heard that they had a reputation for safe, well-made vehicles. My life is put on the line everytime I have to drive that contraption, and I expect that if nothing is done about this issue to ensure a compensation or extended warranty of some kind, Toyota will lose my business( among many, many others, I'm sure. ). More importantly, everytime anyone who is having this issue with a Toyota rav 4 gets in the car, they are increasing the risk of injury or death caused by an accident from this cheap, faulty, unreliable transmission. Please consider this issue when reviewing Toyota's lack of concern for their driver's safety. I am sure that some bigwig is sitting in an office somewhere, profiting from the money that Toyota saved by using defective parts.

An investigation should be conducted into the transmission slippage problem of the Toyota Rav4 2002 and later models. Mine Rav4 had a problem with this issue and I reported to Toyota company about the issue, but no recall has taken. I had done some research and found out that many owners of this type of vehicles have had the same problem. As I have experienced, the slippage can create a very dangerous situation while traveling on the road. I strongly recommend the NHTSA to look into this problem as well.

About a month after having my 90,000 tune up at my local Toyota dealer, I noticed my transmission was slipping; from first to second and second to third. It started intermittently and then became more frequent to the point that I needed it to be inspected. On my way to the dealer my car stalled in the middle of an intersection; cars were honking and I was thankful no one rear-ended me since I was exiting off a ramp. At the dealer they said they could not duplicate my problem (don't know how they couldn't ;everyone driving in my car noticed!) and I drove it away without any problems for almost 2 weeks; the slipping started again. This time my check engine light came on. After taking it back for a second inspection they determined that my ecm needed to be replaced at a cost of $1,200. It has been almost 2 weeks and my car is working great after they replaced the ecm. What upsets me is the fact that Toyota knew there was an issue with the ecms. Back in 2006 I was notified by my dealership that my ecm needed to be reprogrammed. I had mine reprogrammed but it didn't help. I just hope that no one is injured as a result of these defective ecms.

Somewhere around the later part of June, 2009 my car began hesitating. I took it to the dealer and they could not find what was wrong with it. I took it back and then was informed the it was my ecm. I contacted Toyota to have this problem fixed since it was a manufacturing problem during production. They informed me that it was my responsibility to get it fixed. My vehicle has around 97,000 miles on it. This is happening on a regular basis. Several times my family and I were endangered because someone almost hit my vehicle from the back because of the hesitation. As of today, I have not been successful at getting Toyota to offer any assistance in getting this repairs. The consumer stated the vehicle would loose acceleration and the rpm spiked. Whenever the consumer stopped at a light, the vehicle failed to move immediately. The technician informed the consumer the transmission was slipping, due to a problem stemming from the ecm, which was not reading properly which was affecting the transmission. Updated ivoq. 08/07/09.

All of a sudden out of the blue my transmission started slipping and hard shifting. We drove it home to park it until we could figure out the problem. $1000 later and no thanks to Toyota it is fixed. It was the computer that needed reprogrammed. Thankfully the transmission wasn't shot b/c we didn't drive it after it started to hard shift and slip. Took it to Toyota and they were going to charge us $5000 for a new transmission. But we found someone to help us with the computer problem.

The transmission started slipping so we decided to add some atf. That seemed to work for a day but the shifts became harder after that. At times the car would not accelerate properly and would bog down. We took the car to the dealership and they started giving us the runaround. They said the tranny needs fixing (the car was something like 500 miles out of the warranty), then they said that they will replace the computer to see if that fixes the problem. It didn't, since as we all know the original computer has already caused the transmission to break and the new one would not help. At this point I started researching the problem and found many more people with the same issue on the internet. I called Toyota to complain and they did not want to do anything even though: a) the car was just out of the warranty, b) they provided a TSB to the dealership which ignored it and did not do the update to the computer before the problem showed up, c) all maintenance work was done at the dealership. In the end we paid to get the transmission fixed out of pocket which was not cheap.

Transmission began slipping while accelerating from stop. There were hard shifts when changing from 1st to 2nd and to 3rd gears. The next morning, there seemed to be no problem. This is unsafe since one can not depend upon the transmission / engine control module when pulling out into traffic.

Transmission slipping, unable to accelerate. Severe jerking, bone rattling and very jarring, loss of power and vehicle stalling. Occurred several times, had repaired immediately and a high cost to me. Transmission hasn't felt right since. Stopped driving vehicle to replacement of ecm was replaced. I'm not confident that the transmission didn't suffer damage during this limited time it was driven and until the repair could be made. I haven't felt completely safe because the failure was so severe and quick to surface.

2001 Toyota rav 4 started with check engine light coming on and off then Toyota sent ssc-601 in March of 08 that I needed to have ecm reprogrammed which I did{took tech 2 times to get it right} now my transmission started slipping so I took it in to Toyota and they did a diagnostic and sure as pie they said ecm has failed and they want 940. 00 to replace it. This is a widespread problem that has been seen by Toyota and is a manufactures defect that they expect us the consumer to eat I've had nothing but runaround from both local dealer and their corporate office. No one seems to care and is unwilling to do anything about this.

I purchased my used 2002 Toyota Rav4 on 12/10/05 from south coast Toyota of costa mesa. Shortly after purchasing it, I received some kind of "adjustment notice" asking me to bring the car in, which I did. I asked what they needed to do to the car, they would not directly answer my question and said it "was nothing, just a minor adjustment. " in September of 2008, shortly after my warranty had expired and my car was just over 83,000 miles, the transmission began slipping completely out of gear while I was driving it, and then it wouldn't shift into gear, and I would suddenly have no control over the car so I had to stop, and then try to get it in gear, or drive home in 1st. I had to drive from 1st gear or 4th. I was unable to drive it on the freeway to get to work, and had to stop driving it all together on the street. The dealer would not replace the transmission. The price he quoted me to "replace the transmission and ecu" was around $4,500. I was furious, as the reason I purchased Toyotas was because they drove 200,000 miles as long as you properly maintained them, which I always did. I went and had to pay $2,593. 00 at irvine transmission center in irvine, CA on 9/24/08. After replacing the transmission and test driving it, it was ready for pickup. When they got in the car to drive it up to me, suddenly the new transmission wouldn't shift. So, they researched the problem and told me the computer (ecu) apparently had to be replaced also, and they had discovered through online sites that Toyota was having problems with this vehicle. The dealer charged me $500 to replace the ecu. The dealer sold me a Rav4 they knew was having transmission and ecu failure. I wrote Toyota a complaint. I believe I should be reimbursed the money I am out, and this car should be recalled with the hundreds of complaints, if not thousands, that have been reported. I request you take action!.

I brought my rav brand new in 2002. Have had no problem with it up until a few a year ago when the engine light came on intermittent. Every time I was going to take the vehicle into get checked it would go out. When I arrived at my present duty station I was deployed almost immediately. Within two months of my deployment my wife told me that car was having a hard time moving and could hear the transmission slipping. She then took the vehicle to the mechanic and they told her that the transmission was broke and needed to be repaired. Only 52000 miles on the vehicle. The mechanic also told my wife that there could be a TSB out on the vehicle pertaining to the electronic control module, part that tells the transmission to shift gears, "ecm"and there was several that pertained the problem and what needed to be replaced. Being in italy she contacted the states rep for Toyota and was told that they couldn't locate our car because we bought it from a licensed dealer "american spec vehicle" from germany. She then contact the agency that is authorized to sell "american spec cars" and was informed that the vehicle fell under the warranty and that they "american Toyota" should pay for it based on an american TSB. Called Toyota again and nothing. When I came home, we took the vehicle to local dealership and because it was an american TSB they would consider the replacement. In the mean time they assured us that the vehicle was safe to drive and being our only vehicle my wife was forced to drive it. Toyota "rome" oked the replacement of the ecm, the actual fault of the vehicle but has refused to replace the transmission the result of the faulty part. Now the transmission is completely shot and looking on line thousands of american consumers are paying thousands of dollars out to replace a product that is the result of Toyota's engineering flaws. I personally feel that they are responsible the transmission and the replacement. Further investigation is requested.

Automatic transmission started thumping/jerking when shifting from park to drive or reverse, despite having foot on the brake. Within a month, the transmission started slipping and would not shift from first gear. Engine races at 4,000+ rmp and does not shift to other gears.

As I pulled out into traffic the transmission started slipping and my 2002 Toyota Rav4 hesitated and would shift into gear. I took it to Toyota on dixie highway, louisville, ky where I had purchased the vehicle and took it for every service. They put some type of fluid said that this may fix the problem. I went to get it and once again would not run. They then told me that it was probably the transmission and that I probably would not be back to see them. They quoted me a price of $4,000 to have the transmission fixed.

I was driving on the freeway when my transmission started slipping. I was in heavy traffic and was scared that I was going to lose my automatic transmission completely and be stuck on the road or rear-ended due to it hesitating badly between gears. It happened so quickly I was thrown off by what I should do but I did manage to make it home then I parked it until I could get it to a local repair shop.

I have a 2003 Toyota Rav4, at 86600 miles it appeared my transmission was slipping, when I would pull out in front of anyone it was stall and slip while going into 1st and 2nd gear. (automatic transmission), the dealership (Toyota) said it was internal in the transmission so I took it to a transmission place, they said they could not find anything wrong with it. After review the complaints on the internet it seems that this is happening with Toyota's 2001 thru 2003 and it is the ecm that goes bad and if you drive your car it will tare up the transmission. I went back to Toyota and showed them the bulletin put out by Toyota and after some back and forth with them they installed me a new ecm, this was just 2 days ago, they are not sure if this will fix the problem or not, but I believe Toyota should recall these vehicles before someone get killed, this is a real expense to the car owners.

Transmission slipping on 2001 Toyota Rav4. Service bulletin issued requiring replacement of computer to fix this problem. Bulletin extended warranty to 80,000. Consumer never notified of this problem. Computer went bad at 87,000 miles. Toyota and consumer currently going round and round over whether Toyota or consumer must pay for computer replacement. Consumer also told that transmission may now need to be replaced. Toyota has received numerous complaints about this problem from Rav4 owners and in many cases the shift problems related to the computer failure has resulted in damage to transmission which Toyota will not pay for.

Same transmission problem as everyone else. Transmission started to slip, stopped driving immediately and told the computer needed to be replace. Furious at the fact that this is not a recall. There is no maintenance which as the owner I failed to do. This is a safety issue and I have sold my Toyota with complete dissatisfaction at Toyota's lack of response to this. If I did not stop driving immediately I'm told I would have ruined the transmission and it would have cost $4,00 instead of the $1,600. Slipping gears while driving is a safety hazard. Does someone need to get hurt before Toyota does something?.

The contact owns a 2002 Toyota Rav4. When driving she experiences gear slippage in the transmission. This causes the vehicle to bounce and stall. The computer chip was replaced, but the failure has not been remedied. The failure mileage 75,000. The vehicle identification number was unavailable.

Toyota Rav4 my transmission slips and jerks. I was just at a light, and it didn't work properly. I almost got hit. I am now scared to drive it.