Do you think your GEN II has a brake problem.. Please vote..

Huh? That almost reads like a bot wrote it. But I've seen better from bots.

 

I can occasional feel the brakes not work and VSC kicking in in our 09 over potholes and slurry strips. I'm thinking it's more to do with the crap OEM Goodyears than firmware.

I had the same phenomena happen a few years on a 1991 Lexus LS400 that I drive, turned out to be mismatched tires from the PO - a set of BFGoodrich Touring T/A VR4 on the drive wheels and Bridgestone Potenza RE950s on the steer wheels. Replaced them with ContiExtremeContacts(I now have Bridgestone Potenza RE960s on it) and I haven't had the ABS trigger unnecessarily.

 

VSC will not activate in this situation, unless you are cornering and the car fails to respond to steering inputs. I suspect you are talking about traction control, not VSC.

Tom

 

I have almost 30k miles on my '08 and have never had a problem with braking. I can understand that there would be that fraction of a second lapse between the traction control and the ABS if you are barreling into a traffic light going 50mph and slam on the brakes on a bumpy road filled with potholes. But i've driven full size pickup trucks that do the same thing and the braking distance is substanially longer. It sounds like bad drivers wanting a bailout for bad driving.

 

Another opinion. Thank you for sharing.

 

I've been reading this site for the past year since buying an '09. I find it interesting that the majority of posts I read last year were about how happy, and proud, most owners were. No one ever mentioned any problems with sudden acceleration or bad breaks.

Take a look around. There are millions of Toyotas on the road. If all of them were defective, we'd all be dead (or seriously injured) from crashing all over the place.

Drive slow. Save Gas. Live long and prosper.

 

I have had the traction control light come on and a feeling of brake 'delay' when exiting the offramp off of the freeway - there is a shallow series of potholes that always do the trick and they tough to avoid.

I find it mildly unsettling and if there is a possible fix, like they did for the 2010, why wouldn't you implement it if it is going to make the car safer? I voted Yes - Fix it.

I got a new 2009 pkg 2 and I have noticed it, if you haven't felt it in your vehicle it just means that you haven't run into a situation where it occurs - you will eventually, and hopefully it isn't 5 minutes after raining on the highway.

 

None I tried today to get the "so called "effect On icy road .Couldn't do it

 

Ice or slippery surfaces are not really what cause the effect. It has to do with hitting sharp bumps in the road, enough to cause the suspension to unload a bit.

 

OK, this thread is as good as any. I've been reading and reading about this all over PC. Not really watching the news coverage much - I long ago gave up on 30 second soundbites as a way to tell or hear a story. But I've been keeping an open mind, neither discounting the alarmists or being reassured by the apologists. But today it was pissing down rain outside so I went looking for trouble.

I drove out to a hill I know of with some manhole covers, light traffic. One of the manhole covers is even set a bit too deep, so it's effectively a manhole sized pothole. I also went and found a good slippery set of train tracks. Braking over the manhole covers there was no odd sensation whatsoever. The car just slowed down. But over the train tracks I got a lot of ABS action and a sense of not slowing down as much as I'd like. Another run at a slower speed was a little weird, the first rail didn't cause ABS feedback, but the second rail did, then a little bit of skidding as the tires bit asphalt again. That was slightly unnerving because just when I thought there wouldn't be any excitement, there was. That was all in my 2005 Honda Odyssey.

Same tests run in the 2007 Prius (new Michelin Primacy MXV4 tires) certainly felt different. I was able to get the slip indicator light to come on over the deepest manhole cover and a momentary sense of decreased deceleration. Important to note however that the car was still decelerating much faster than the heavier Odyssey managed. Over the railroad tracks I again got the slip indicator light flashing and an oddly different sensation on the pedal than the very definitive ABS feedback of the Odyssey. But the car slowed down so quick I found myself stopping barely past the 2nd rail. In the Odyssey I'd carried right through. I went back and forth a few times, different speeds and different braking techniques. I could understand what people mean when using words like "floating" or "release" to describe it, but in the end the car was stopping right quick.

I don't have a test facility to mock up worse scenarios, that's what Toyota and NHTSA will have been doing, but I could speculate that a series of multiple potholes or slippery manhole covers could induce an extended sensation of reduced braking effectiveness. However I'd get the same reduced braking effectiveness with a different feel from my Odyssey's ABS - and stop longer.

If the feeling is any more odd or in fact the braking any less effective in the Gen III then maybe there is cause for the recall (beyond PR and responding to pressure). But I don't feel it's more than a driver feedback issue in the Gen II. Yes I like how the Odyssey felt better (and the Vehicle Stability Control warning never came on in the Odyssey, BTW) but it didn't give me any better stopping results.

- D

 

I'm on a loooooog trip, now in Florida, 1600 miles so far in our very scary Prius and have had plenty of chances to get the brakes to do that little interrupt between regen and hydraulic brake.

Tried several ways to do it, but only one acheived the deed. A very slow and steady application of the brakes, slowly increasing pedal pressure allowed me to replicate the gap in braking. Nothing that would cause an accident, but it was noticeable.

The weird thing about these little episodes, they occured on smooth road surfaces. I couldn't feel it on rougher surfaces. May have happened, but I couldn't tell on the bumpier stuff.

Got the Prius to do it again about an hour ago. May the brake force be with you!

 

I slowly dawned on me why the regen braking has a weakness when going over potholes. Since the brake force is applied behind the diff, when one wheel loses ground contact while the other does not, the diff will do what it wasn't meant to do: send momentum from the non-flying wheel to the flying one, causing it too accellerate in the reverse direction, or if yow will, decellerate rapidly, potentially into a reverse movement. In the process, the car loses braking momentum. The only thing, the brake computer can do is rapidly applying the friction brake on the wheel that still has ground contact. But I doubt that the computer is smart enough to do so. If not, it'll probably just get confused and give up braking until both wheels regain the correct speed. Which is prrobably what people are experiencing.

 

I never use brakes. They hurt fuel economy :madgrin:.

 

That's definitely the sensation I feel in low mileage '07 Touring - on nightly commute there's a manhole cover at bottom of hill, right before stop sign. At first I blamed OEM tires, but replaced with Nokians, and it continues. If nothin' else, its reassuring to know other pre-2010s owners experience similar with braking.

 

I rarely driven a toyota besides the new prius. What i dont understand is why all of a sudden alot of toyota owners say they have a brake issue from their recent and older cars, when consumer reports rate most toyotas 10 for the safety rating every year lol. Now everybody says theres a problem with their toyota after the media blitz lol

But I've always seen older camrys and corolla, civic as lower end cars growing up, and expected it to drive like a lower end car lol. I didnt understand the popularity fad for toyota. But the higher end toyotas that i've driven in like the land cruiser seem to drive alot better. But i was never impressed with the older camrys, civic and corollas. They were old folks cars that drive sluggish and smells like cloth interior sweat.

For the prius. I got it new, theres no recall brake problem in my prius. It functions the way its suppose too. But the response for the brakes are a little slow imo. But it seems to be the characteristic of other toyota cars too. Possibly its a gas saving thing to put less power in the brakes, or they just dont have good brakes. German cars bmws audis, land rovers ive driven in have amazing brakes.

 

They are hoping there is money in being a victim.

 

I voted no in the poll and I'm going to stand by that. 2004 bought last April.

Anyway, I think I felt what some people might call 'the problem' a few days ago. I was slowing to make a right-hand turn and hit a rough patch. It felt (for about 1/4 sec.) like I hit a patch of ice, then it was gone.

 

I have an'08 and the brakes are perfect.

 

There's more truth to that than you realize! The fact that so many are blasting over pot holes to even NOTICE the 1/4 second braking lag amazes me. But apparenly most would rather NOT drive with a mindset striving for high mpg's. That shows just how much in the minority mpg'ers are. I actually had to experiment to ever notice the tiny lag, and always presumed that this is simply the first slip associated with anti-lock brakes ... after all, that's what anti-lock brakes do.

.

 

I am having issues with my 08 that I lose traction and have some instances of very brief sudden acceleration spurts all with the ABS light on the dash flickering. At first, the loss of traction, sometimes with some acceleration but not always, & usually with some minimal feel of fishtailing, was happening rarely & rather predictably (when it happened that is, but not everytime) when I'd hit a small bump in pavement. However, in the last year I've had 2 or 3 instances of brief sudden acceleration surges that were not coincident with rough pavement. All happened when I was traveling at a constant rate, about 30 - 40 mph on clear pavement. I could feel the accelerator being taken away from my foot. I was able to stop all of them with a foot off the accelerator & quick tap to the brakes. The ABS traction issue has always been disconcerting to me, but the recent addition of acceleration surges is making me nervous. I have reported this to my service dept but, of course, they've found nothing. These things never repeat themselves when the service dept is looking for them so I'm not blaming them... but I am getting nervous.

So, yes, I think I have a problem & I want it fixed.