The
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating a potential safety problem in 200,000 Toyota Tundra full-size pickup trucks.
The issue involves frame corrosion, similar to the corrosion issues with its smaller Tacoma pick-up trucks.
Andrew Tyndall owns one of those trucks and says the problem was obvious.
"They put the truck on the lift and weren't able to fit it up because the frame started to crack!"
The steel frame of his 1998 Toyota Tacoma was splitting in half.
Toyota admits it failed to rustproof the frames on 800 thousand Tacoma pick-up trucks from 1995 to 2000.
Toyota resolved the issue by buying back rusted Tacomas.
But now a similar problem is popping up on 2000 and 2001 Tundras.
The problem is the spare tire mount can corrode and break, with the spare potentially falling out as you're driving down the highway.
The NHTSA has 20 complaints of spare tires coming loose and five cases where the loose tire damaged a brake line.
There is no recall, but if you have an early 2000 Tundra, ask a mechanic to inspect the rear frame for rust.
Toyota has not said how it will address this latest problem.
But the company did quickly address the Tacoma rust issue and will hopefully do the same here.
