Years to avoid Transmission issues

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T

tuckytres

10 Year 15 Year
Joined
May 20, 2007
Threads
3
Messages
18
Location
Denver
Hello all,
I am looking for a 100 series and know there were issues with some of the 2000 year range transmission. Something with a washer or bearing that can fail early. How big of an issue was this? Did it cover a year range before the problems was fixed.
Thanks for any insite, Art
 
The sample data on this is so small that it's not very statistically relevant. Others will argue the point. Most of the hubub has been from a few failures talked about in internet forums - the other 30,000+ owners in the USA dont have issues.

The internet wisdom is that they happen early in life so after 100k you are probably fine. Frankly if a vehicle has made it 150k on the original trans that's a win in my book. No one should complain about that... but people do because it happens, sometimes to them. I bought my 2000 knowing full well the trans could explode at any moment - oh the horror.

Find a nice example of a truck you like and move ahead. It's a 13 year old used car.... it will need things.
 
Compared to other year Land Cruisers, they fail at an alarming rate. Compared to Chrysler minivans and Lexus RX300's, they fail about 1/4th as often. :lol: Best gues is that the failure rate is about 4% for MY 2000. (search for the 2011 tranny update thread for the details). Not enough failures on here to nail down a production date range, and the failures spill over into '99 and '01 and even a few '02's. And there is no "safe mileage". The most recent one went at 180K, and there was one over 200K IIRC. Anyways, it sucks for the 20-some-odd folks on this board that have had legitimate failures, but given the relatively remote chance of failure, combined with the % of miles actually spent in BFE, I say :meh: and contine to drive my 2000 wherever, whenever, and however I choose. We'll cross that $3K bridge, when, and IF, we ever get to it. There is no predictor or failure, PM history shouldn't make you sleep better at night wrt tranny failures, just find a good, solid truck in all other respects and go for it. Other model years have issues of a similar magnitude, such as brake MC failures, Nav/LCD failures, etc. 80's have head gaskets and PHH's. On 60's, everything bolted to the engine fails long before the engine does... Pick your poison. For the additional price of an '02 over a '00, you could likely PM a reman'd tranny in, break even and call it a day. good luck!
 
You know, on most cars I might agree with the "it's a win if it made 150k miles to begin with" thing. However, having seen my friend's stepdad's 2003 LX make it to 320k on the original trans, and seeing how beautifully it still shifts, I just tended to hold the 100s to a higher esteem than most other vehicles, and even most other Toyotas.

It was really a disappointment to find out such an important part fails so much more frequently in the 2000s than the later models like the one I just mentioned.

*However*, the cost difference between a facelift 2003 truck and a 2000 is of such magnitude, that the price of throwing a trans into the 2000 still wouldn't compare. For the LXs, I also do not like the dash or the newer instrument gauges on the newer trucks (I love the original "floating" Optitron style). And of course there's that whole nav thing.
 
playdrv4me said:
You know, on most cars I might agree with the "it's a win if it made 150k miles to begin with" thing. However, having seen my friend's stepdad's 2003 LX make it to 320k on the original trans, and seeing how beautifully it still shifts, I just tended to hold the 100s to a higher esteem than most other vehicles, and even most other Toyotas.

It was really a disappointment to find out such an important part fails so much more frequently in the 2000s than the later models like the one I just mentioned.

*However*, the cost difference between a facelift 2003 truck and a 2000 is of such magnitude, that the price of throwing a trans into the 2000 still wouldn't compare. For the LXs, I also do not like the dash or the newer instrument gauges on the newer trucks (I love the original "floating" Optitron style). And of course there's that whole nav thing.
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I seen quite a few cars make it into the stratosphere in terms of mileage on original trans - my old BMW 633 with 303k miles for example. I'm not saying that isn't it great, they can and do make the high miles, but at some point you have to set expectation of failure and any miles beyond that is a bonus.

Were solving that nav thing.
 
re_guderian said:
Compared to other year Land Cruisers, they fail at an alarming rate. Compared to Chrysler minivans and Lexus RX300's, they fail about 1/4th as often. :lol: Best gues is that the failure rate is about 4% for MY 2000. (search for the 2011 tranny update thread for the details). Not enough failures on here to nail down a production date range, and the failures spill over into '99 and '01 and even a few '02's. And there is no "safe mileage". The most recent one went at 180K, and there was one over 200K IIRC. Anyways, it sucks for the 20-some-odd folks on this board that have had legitimate failures, but given the relatively remote chance of failure, combined with the % of miles actually spent in BFE, I say :meh: and contine to drive my 2000 wherever, whenever, and however I choose. We'll cross that $3K bridge, when, and IF, we ever get to it. There is no predictor or failure, PM history shouldn't make you sleep better at night wrt tranny failures, just find a good, solid truck in all other respects and go for it. Other model years have issues of a similar magnitude, such as brake MC failures, Nav/LCD failures, etc. 80's have head gaskets and PHH's. On 60's, everything bolted to the engine fails long before the engine does... Pick your poison. For the additional price of an '02 over a '00, you could likely PM a reman'd tranny in, break even and call it a day. good luck!
Click to expand...


Though we dont philosophically disagree on our approach to this question I still regard the data on the super scientific Mud thread to be anecdotal.
 
RobRed said:
Though we dont philosophically disagree on our approach to this question I still regard the data on the super scientific Mud thread to be anecdotal.
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Not sure why you'd say it's "anecdotal". The failures are pretty much validated, there's a pretty good estimate of the MUD population size, almost all regular posters will post up a failure of this magnitude, etc. It's a small sample to be sure, but about the best you're going to get outside of Toyota's own records. All of the failures were eliminated from those who joined MUD and posted immediately upon transmission failure so that the failure data is really a sampling of the existing 100 series owners. It's actually not THAT bad of a data set (I do stats for a living). More weighty decisions have certainly been made on sketchier data, that's for sure. Sure, assumptions were made, but that's true of any data set. Heck, a bunch of your medications have worse data sets than this... :lol:
 
I tend to think the failure rate should be more based on the number of failures reported on this board compared to the number of MY 2000 owners on this board instead.


If you have 20 failures and 200 owners of a MY 2000, then the failure rate is actually closer to 10%.
(numbers just used for example purpose; not exact qtys)

If you looked at that sample size, the tranny issue is actually alarming to me.
 
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We've argued this point before... To restate my position on this - I think the sample is small and skewed. This board has a type of user base that often comes to report something bad. I understand the attempt was made to correct this skew in the data sets but unless you poll 30,000 plus owners (or even a 1000) outside of this population this is anecdotal. Yes actual failures have occurred - and the facts might be that 2000 has a bad part in the trans but our data set here is to small to make a conclusion. Carry on gents.
 
It's the same as the 98-99 diff, you don't see many other years reporting issues other than those two. Same with the 2000 tranny. Plenty of 98-99 trucks being wheeled hard on 2 pinion diffs without a problem, plenty of 00 trucks with no tranny issues.
 
You're going to see a lot more reports about broken stuff on forums than you will in real life especially on MUD where some seem pretty OCD about maintenance and repairs. The LC from what I've experienced so far over the life of my '00 is very durable. A lot of my friends already have problems and their cars aren't even as old as my LC.
 
- 2000 Transmissions will all explode
- 98-99 front diffs will all implode
- Everyone need SFA's. IFS suck.
- People who drive Jeeps have serious issues.

One of these is true.
 
shogun2fire said:
You're going to see a lot more reports about broken stuff on forums than you will in real life...
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ackk. I guess if you repeat that to yourself often enough, you might think it's true. The nice thing about "forums", especially MUD (:cheers: Woody), is that you can easily discern who shows up just to b!tch, vs. those who are regulars who have problems occur. With the tranny failures, it is easy to look at the join date, and the post date, and to see which is which. There is no reason to discount someone's experience who joined mud in '07 with an FJ40, and had a UZJ100 tranny failure in 2010, is there? Those who joined in Jan 2009, had two posts, and posted in the same month about tranny failures are easily ignored and discounted from the data set.

shogun2fire said:
...especially on MUD where some seem pretty OCD about maintenance and repairs...
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and therein lies the beauty of the tranny failure phenomenom, by all accounts it appears to be independent of usage, PM, mileage, etc. which makes the user accounts here likely representative of the LC population at large. Now if this were a Toy Hauler forum, and we all showed up with tranny failures after pulling 8K lbs 40x/year, and all had JiffyLube service our tranny's it might be a different story. :lol::lol:
 
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