Flat repair saga

[fooljoe]

So yesterday I somehow got a bolt stuck in my right rear tire. I heard a clunking noise as I was driving in my parking lot as I arrived at work in the morning, parked right away and inspected the tires to find it. Pushed the SOS button and they sent out a tow truck to take it to the nearest Toyota dealer. The dealer said I needed a new tire so I got stuck in a Camry rental for the day while they waited for the tire to come in (at least it was a hybrid.) All normal so far (although I would've thought the tire should've been repairable, but whatever.)

So when I go back to pick up my Rav today I put my stuff in, turn it on, and I'm greeted with glaring red error messages. "Braking system error", "ABS Error", "Have your vehicle checked by a dealership immediately." Long story short I had to leave the car with them and keep the Camry another day (another yucky day of driving in the non-HOV lanes. :x )

Anyone seen any of these errors? How could this happen with what should've been a simple flat repair? Actually the tire never even got flat - the bolt kept it plugged. And how in the world could the people at the dealership have called me up to tell me my car was all done with these obvious error messages? Really?

Anyway, I'm not going to publicly shame the dealer yet - I'm interested to see how this will be resolved tomorrow (better be tomorrow!), but I'm interested to see if anybody's got any theories about what's going on here.

 

[Kohler Controller]

Perhaps the tire pressure monitor sensor was damaged or not seen by the vehicle for some reason? I know the Prius had a button under the steering wheel that had to be pushed after new tires for the car to reset everything. I think the ABS uses them as sensors as well. Just a hunch.

 

[fooljoe]

Update: There is no update. The dealership let me know at the end of the day today that they have no clue how to fix the problem they created. They put a call in with Toyota engineering and hope to hear back tomorrow. Greaaaaaaaat.

 

[Tadol]

Thats actually pretty scary -

Is there any possibility the tow caused a problem? Did they start and move your car after they replaced the tire? Does this dealer even know about EVs? And for a tire job, should they need to?

Keep us posted!

 

[Khaihon]

Fooljoe,

How was your vehicle towed?
I'm curious because the Manual (p.414) says not to use a sling-type tow truck, but to use a wheel lift or flatbed. did you get to choose which type of truck when speaking with Toyota SOS?

 

[fooljoe]

It was towed by lifting up the front wheels and letting the rear wheels roll. I thought this was a little strange since the right rear wheel had the damage, but I figured since I was using Toyota's towing service they knew what to do. :roll:

Anyway it turns out that the towing is what caused all the error messages. The explanation I got was that there wasn't anything wrong and the car just needed a reboot to clear the codes. They might've tried this a day earlier, but they wanted to talk to Engineering first just to make sure there was no real problem.

So I finally got my Rav back today, and so far everything seems fine, 3 days later.

 

[miimura]

It was towed by lifting up the front wheels and letting the rear wheels roll. I thought this was a little strange since the right rear wheel had the damage, but I figured since I was using Toyota's towing service they knew what to do. :roll:

Anyway it turns out that the towing is what caused all the error messages. The explanation I got was that there wasn't anything wrong and the car just needed a reboot to clear the codes. They might've tried this a day earlier, but they wanted to talk to Engineering first just to make sure there was no real problem.

So I finally got my Rav back today, and so far everything seems fine, 3 days later.

Was this the "Power Cycle 5 Times" reboot to clear the error? Or did they do it through the OBD?

I get an ABS error on my VW when they Smog test it with only the front wheels on the rollers. However, that just goes away after all 4 wheels roll together for a short distance. It's strange that Toyota makes the error so persistent.

 

[fooljoe]

Didn't get the details as to how they cleared it, but I'd assume it would be using their computer (OBD?). It could've been that driving it for a while would've cleared it on its own - or I probably could've cleared it myself by disconnecting the 12v for a bit, but when I went to pick the car up and all these errors were flashing at me as soon as I turned it on I figured I might as well just leave it there for them to sort it out just in case something was really broken.