Shock top hat failure on our stock 2024 Tacoma Off-Road while offroading

[AlexT]

Reading on Tacoma World it sounds like the guys that cracked the top hat hit a pothole in the desert doing 60mph. I knew a guy with a 1st gen Tundra and he had 250k on it (this was years ago) and the only repair he ever made to the thing was when his wife hit a big pothole on the highway. I’m beginning to suspect this won’t be an issue.

Toyota is advertising these trucks, mostly the TRD pro, as being able to bomb through the desert and take jumps. It's the first thing you see when you click on the Tacoma overview page on their website. They also highlight the bilsteins in the TRD OR as being "Co-engineered with Bilstein®, * Tacoma TRD Off-Road comes equipped with the most extreme suspension setup in its history." That may be the case but they obviously didn't upgrade the top hats as well. I have to imagine the Pro and TH have been beefed up in that area.

Aluminum, and especially thin cast aluminum is susceptible to fatigue failure, which is repeated low stress over time. Steel is not nearly as susceptible to this. You may blame user error but I see weakness and something I would have to worry about if going far off the pavement. Know that every time you inadvertently bottom out your front suspension, the full force is being absorbed by a few square inches of thin aluminum.

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[Powhunter]

Toyota is advertising these trucks, mostly the TRD pro, as being able to bomb through the desert and take jumps. It's the first thing you see when you click on the Tacoma overview page on their website. They also highlight the bilsteins in the TRD OR as being "Co-engineered with Bilstein®, * Tacoma TRD Off-Road comes equipped with the most extreme suspension setup in its history." That may be the case but they obviously didn't upgrade the top hats as well. I have to imagine the Pro and TH have been beefed up in that area.

Aluminum, and especially thin cast aluminum is susceptible to fatigue failure, which is repeated low stress over time. Steel is not nearly as susceptible to this. You may blame user error but I see weakness and something I would have to worry about if going far off the pavement. Know that every time you inadvertently bottom out your front suspension, the full force is being absorbed by a few square inches of thin aluminum.

I don’t disagree with any of that. Time will tell. On the bright side, I don’t see that being a terribly difficult piece to upgrade should it need a recall.

 

[znzn]

Wow… that’s crazy. I thought we were paying extra for reliability...

Same. Im switching brands for the first time and getting nervous.

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