2011 TOYOTA RAV4 Complaints

The contact owns a 2011 Toyota Rav4. The contact stated that while driving approximately 25 mph, the vehicle in front of her abruptly stopped for an animal that jumped onto the road, as a result, the vehicle accelerated and crashed into the rear of a Toyota Prius. The brake pedal was continuously depressed. The "low tire" message was displayed. The driver sustained injuries to her knee, neck, and chest, and medical attention was provided. There was not a report of any fire, air bag deployment, or police report being filed. The vehicle was taken to her residence. The vehicle was towed to the collision center. The local dealer was not contacted. The vehicle was not diagnosed or repaired. The manufacturer was not notified of the failure. The failure mileage was approximately 143,000.

Driver's side rear passenger seat belt keeps getting jammed in the intake storage and hard to nearly impossible to engage. Had it fixed a few times but passengers continue to have difficulty pulling the seat belt from its storage position.

There has not been an incident yet. The problem is that the steering is slightly stiff and what I would call jerky. It kind of sticks as you turn and you have to exert a little more pressure on the steering wheel and it lets go and moves on to where you wanted. It is not intermittent and it is getting worse all the time. The car has 74,000 miles on it. Is there a danger of this locking up some day to where a person would loose control of the car, or is it just an aggravating nuisance ? The exact date this started is not known but it has probably been at least 18 months. It is the worst at slow speeds.

When applying the brakes to stop at a stoplight, I noticed the brake pedal was very hard and was not stopping the vehicle as it normally did. The stop at the light was not a sudden stop. At the time this incident occurred, the brakes were being gradually applied as the vehicle was coasting to a slow stop. As the vehicle came to rest, the engine started to race with tachometer showing 4500 rpm. I placed the transmission into neutral fearing the car would accelerate through the stoplight. As I placed the car into neutral, the engine raced up to 6500 rpm. When the light turned green, I made a right turn into a parking lot, and the engine stopped racing and the brakes and engine began performing properly. Today was the first time this happened. The stop was being made on level ground at time of incident. The car's speed before the incident had been 35 mph and was at less than 5 mph when issue began happening. Prior to traveling in the 35 mph zone, the car had recently been on the highway traveling between 55-70 mph for 20 minutes. Mileage on vehicle is currently 141,295. The vehicle is available for inspection. Slow response braking and unintended acceleration place vehicle occupants as well as other vehicles at risk for collision and possible injury. Problem has not been reproduced nor inspected by a dealer or independent service station yet. No parties have inspected the vehicle yet. No warning lights or messages were generated at the time of the incident. There have been no prior symptoms or similar problems which would have indicated this brake/acceleration issue may occur.

I have replaced the front suspension and the back suspension. I have replaced the driveshaft and the muffler and tail pipes. Now they say the entire undercarriage and the brake lines are all rusting out. This car is 2011 and has just 34,607 miles on it and has been keep in a garage its entire time. Now it is unsafe to drive. Drive Shaft fell off in December.2022.

The contact owns a 2011 Toyota Rav4. The contact stated that while pulling into a parking space the vehicle suddenly experienced unintended acceleration and accelerated forward crashing into a parked van. During the incident, the airbags did not deploy. No injuries were reported and no police report was taken. the vehicle was later towed to a collision center and repaired. The cause of the failure was not determined. The contact indicated that the same failure had occurred after the husband stopped at a red light. During the incident, the vehicle suddenly accelerated forward and crashed into the rear of a second vehicle. No injuries were reported and no police report was taken. The cause of the failure was not yet determined. The manufacturer and local dealer were not notified of the failures. The VIN was not available. The failure mileage was 85,000.

Spare tire rear mount cover. The cover is made out of metal and fabric. After a few years the thread holding the material that holds the cover on deteriorates causing the metal cover to fall off. This happens while driving the car having the paint matched metal disk to fall off while driving leaving a tire sized metal disk bouncing around in traffic endangering other cars and drivers. Thread and zipper need to be made out of a better material or a hard latched metal band could be used to hold it on like many other manufacturers do.

Steering : Steering is tight to a point where it takes effort to get the steering wheel to turn . I tried adjusting the column up and down . It may ease the problem temporally , but it returns .

I have discovered that my 2011 rav4 is part of the NHTSA Recall No. : 16V-596 even thought my vin doesn't list it as being part of the recall. As I recently tried to get a rear wheel alignment done due to misaligned rear tires (bowing out). The 3rd party mechanic stated that doing a rear wheel alignment was impossible due to NHTSA Recall No. : 13V-383 repair/fix done by a Toyota dealer where epoxy resin was used to seal the right and left Rear Suspension Lower Arm No. 1 (“arm”) for looseness. The only way to complete the alignment safely would be to completely replace the right and left Rear Suspension Lower Arms. Which perfectly matches the required fixed from the newer NHTSA Recall No. : 16V-596 which remedies the improper temporary repair/fix done by the Toyota dealer to fix the earlier NHTSA Recall No. : 13V-383. As such the VIN range and manufacture date for the NHTSA Recall No. : 16V-596 likely need to be extended to cover all rav4 2011 models.

The car had 115,000 miles on the engine and was just at 3,000 miles post oil change. Making a left turn over oncoming traffic the car died. Barely missed having an accident. As the car sat it did restart. No lights on the dash for engine issues. Drove 2 miles directly to my mechanic. The car had half a quart of oil remaining! Car now closely monitored burns 1/2 quart every 500 miles and more if highway driven.