Did brake maintenance on my 2012 TCH today, and was quite disappointed to see that the front right strut was leaking oil. This is at 2 years and 22,000 miles. A couple of days ago I thought it was bottoming out early on bumps at the right front but never thought much about it. Found the RF tire air pressure a touch high at 38 lbs, and lowered that to 35 lbs. But, today when I pulled the wheel off, it was quite obvious the RF strut was leaking and had lost some oil. This seems really early to have a problem like that, and does not reflect well on Toyota's reputation for quality. This vehicle is highway and city driven, and should be like new. In any case in checking the very helpful strut replacement sticky thread here and a couple of others, I see that in the first 36 months struts should be covered under warranty. My read of the warranty fine print is the same, should be covered. Will call on Monday to get the confirmation. But, in the meantime in preparation, I do have some questions.

1. I'm assuming both front struts should be replaced together, even though only one has failed?

2. Should they do an alignment after replacing the struts?

Any advice is appreciated...

 

Bummer! Let us know what happens...

Yes, struts should be replaced together on an "axle" (in pairs).

An alignment will be needed as well.

Did you get a pic of the leak?

 

On my Google search it seems to be accepted that you need to replace struts in pairs. However, what I also found is that it seems dealers refuse to do it on warranty. However I'm sure out of warranty they would almost force you to do it. So, I'm expecting some push back on that one. The part that does make a bit of sense is that if you were replacing with a different design strut, say Monroe vs OEM Toyota, it would be more important to match the replacements rather than having a mismatched pair.

It would seem you are not disturbing anything that should cause misalignment, but I do hope they check alignment.

Yes, I took some pics. See below. It has obviously been leaking for a while and you can see the grunge kind of flowing out of the drain holes in the bottom spring support. Good coating of oil and dirt!

DSC01556.jpg

 

that is so not Toyota, who's building it? engineers from Ford?

I guess they are starting to sub contract parts from a dollar store (same goes with the big 3) Luckily it's still under warranty. Struts does require an alignment afterwards and better to do it in pairs.

 

Ron, did you even care to read Georgeahybrid and mine write ups on strut replacements? Answering all your questions, including alignment? And difference between KYB and Monroe? Or you just want to wing it using Google as your jet ram for this project?

 

https://www.greenhybrid.com/discuss/...-struts-25492/

 

This time I went for KYB OEM struts vs Monroes I did for the front. I am regretting, I did not do KYB for the front. I am very likely to swap Monroe for KYB. Reason being, KYB strut has a flange that takes care of camber and Monroe does not. Plus, KYB turned out to be a much more stout strut.

 

Took the car in this morning for warranty work. They agree the strut is leaking and needs to be replaced, but there are no replacement parts available in Canada. It will take a minimum of 2 weeks to get parts! Even less impressed with Toyota. I guess the only up side is that if they don't stock parts there must not be many of them failing. Or, I suppose they could be failing so fast they can't keep up with replacements!

That aside, they will only replace one strut and say replacing both is unnecessary. Same with alignment. They say it is not necessary to check alignment when replacing the strut only. If they were replacing the lower suspension arm they would do alignment. It would be real interesting to know what their story is if it was not in warranty and on my nickel.

 

For sure I read them before I made the post. My question was about getting the strut replaced on warranty, not replacing it myself with an aftermarket model. If you read the rest of the posts, you will see that my research on Toyota only replacing one strut, and not doing an alignment was in fact correct.

 

Well, the two weeks for delivery of a replacement strut, magically turned into two days. Got the strut replaced today. Only one, and no alignment. It certainly has smoothed out the bumps. I suspect virtually all the oil was gone. Steering was unchanged.

Tried to get out of them why there was the sudden change in delivery, but they were not talking. At first he said they were in high demand. When I then asked if there was a high failure rate of the strut, he all of a sudden backtracked, and started to babble nonsense. Not sure what was really going on.