This data is from the NHTSA — the US gov't agency tasked with vehicle safety. Complaints are spread across multiple & redundant categories, & are not organized by problem.
So how do you find out what problems are occurring? For this NHTSA complaint data, the only way is to read through the comments below. Any duplicates or errors? It's not us.
This is for a Toyota Sienna xle limited 2004. The cables have snapped on both side sliding doors making them inoperable as automatic doors and hazardous when used as manual sliders.
The passenger side automatic door on my 2004 Toyota Sienna opens half way and then produce a horrible noise as if something is stuck and then tries to go back to latch position.
Hello, our 2004 Toyota Sienna xle driver side sliding door wire snapped day before yesterday. I took it to the near by Toyota dealer and they told me that since I am out of warranty it cost me around $2340. I didn't expect this from a well rated auto company and I am not at all happy. I even went through some websites where they wrote about the same issue. I am very frustrated about this and would like to file a complaint. Hope the company understand the issue and try to fix it and resolve the issue by fixing the existing vehicles.
I have a 2004 Toyota Sienna van. The passenger automatic door lock no longer works. I can only manually lock and unlock it from the inside of the vehicle. The remote entry and the front automatic door lock/unlock does not work for that door. It is an automatic sliding door. That feature works fine.
Our 2004 Sienna sliding door became stuck open and we were forced to cut the cable in order to shut the door. The Toyota dealer quoted several thousand $$ to fix it. The cable remains cut and we now use it as a manual opening door.
- Boulder, CO, USA
Search CarComplaints.com for these popular complaint phrases...
Sienna 2004 le attempting to open the passenger side rear power sliding door the mechanism made a clicking sound and the cable snapped. The motor still appears to be functioning but one of the 2 cables operating the door (braided metal cable) snapped and now the door only slides part way open in the 'manual' mode. I have only 83,000 kms on this 2004 Sienna le and was shocked to see this failure. However, I feel lucky that neither of my children were injured by the cable or mechanism failure. Now I am operating the door in manual mode but it is not opening correctly and I am worried that it may open incorrectly and cause a safety hazard.
Sienna 2004 xle van. The rear side power door stopped working. The cable had broken and hence the power drive for opening and closing the door would not work. The door could be opened by sliding the door manually. I took the van into the dealership to have the part replaced. They were unable to get to the repair and we were leaving town. I asked them if the car was safe to drive as there was no way to disable the door from use and there would be children in the rear who would by habit reach to open the door. The service manager assured me it was fine - only difficult to open manually and even came to the vehicle to demonstrate. The next morning, my husband drove the van to on errands before loading up to take it on vacation. He unthinkingly opened the rear passenger door resulting in the far back side window shattering and the door falling off onto the ground. If there had been someone seated in the vehicle, they would have been covered in glass. If a child had opened the door, it would have fallen on him. We took the van to the dealership and called the Toyota corporate line - both refused to acknowledge that the issue was a safety problem we took the car to an independent repair shop who told us that the cable system was no longer available and had been replaced by a different system which may have been because of the potential safety and poor engineering design. I wrote letters to Toyota but received no response.
The cable to the automatic passenger side sliding door rusted and snapped. We pushed the button by the steering wheel to make it a manual door since it was going to cost between 1,400 and 1,600 dollars depending on the dealership we asked. However the only way to close the door once fully opened is to reach inside the door and pull the inside handle to unlock the holding mechanism to keep the door from sliding shut. My 10 year old son was getting out of the car and shutting the door by using the inside handle to unlatch the door when his fingers were smashed in the door.
Driver side passenger door on a 2004 Toyota Sienna mini van will not close. Normal use of the door. It is electronic opening and closing. However the door goes to shut and then continuously opens back up as if a sensor won't let it close. However when switching to manual, the door does not close either. Nothing in the door runner would cause it not to close, cleaned out all door runways and openings. Something with the door clasp not closing around the hatch of the door prevents the door from remaining closed. The safety issue is the door does on some occasions start opening while driving. Toyota dealer says its our fault and that it would cost close to $2,000 dollars to fix. Money is not the object here, it is a known issue with many Sienna owners and this is just another example of their poor quality workmanship.
Passenger sliding (manual door, not electric version) door will not unlatch when trying to open. Opens about 1/2 inch, but does not move any farther (this is not a freeze/ice issue, it is happening all the time in warm weather). Latch appears not to be unlatching. If I pull really hard, grabbing on the sliding door from the outside while the front passengers door is open(so I can grab the sliding door with 2 hands), I can get the door to finally open. No way to do it without doing that. Used to be occasional, but happening all the time now. Driving with door partially open is a safety condition. Not being able to open the door in an emergency is a safety issue. Having kids get in on the road side of the street is a safety issue.
2004 Toyota Sienna power sliding door cable snapped and ruined sliding door motor. Dealer to charge $2000 for fix. 1 year earlier passenger door cable snapped. Same issues.
My 2004 Toyota Sienna le power door, passenger side, hinge is loose from its track and the dealer wants $500 to repair. My van has 128,000 miles but the reason we bought the Toyota and not the Honda was because of Toyota's reputation. I realize the van has over 100,000 miles but I thought this part should have lasted longer. The door now only works manually and is difficult to open thus it's a real hassle if you have kids in the back seat. It seems to have failed prematurely as I thought Toyota lasted longer. The dealer has ordered the part and this is a two week turnaround item but after reading the blogs I need to file a complaint as this type of problem looks to be quite common. My other vehicle is a Tacoma 2005 and it has a few cosmetic problems as well. Specifically, the sun visors are defective; I replaced the drivers side at a cost of $75 and the passenger is doing the same thing. My next vehicle will be a Honda.
Car parked on hill while opening the power sliding door cable snapped and door slid closed on hand. Door cable is a small thin cable the door motor pulls on in both directions to open and close. Cable rusted through there is no maintenance schedule or way to inspect cable. Cable rusted and broke within door. Cable should have been made of stainless steel or some none corrosive material. There are a large number of complaints for this online. A small child would be in danger due to the weight of this door.
Toyota Sienna '04 driver side door has a loud clunking sound when opening and closing doors. Toyota issued a letter to customers to get the door fixed but I never got a letter. Why did Toyota sent out letter to fix the problem and not call it a recall. Please help to get my door fix.
I own a 2004 Toyota Sienna le. The rear passenger door is automatic. One of the reasons why we purchased this vehicle. It has since stopped working. I was bringing the kids home and went to drop off another child. Opened the door with the power button, worked fine. Door would not shut. Turned the power off to the door, still would not shut. Had to drive home with the door ajar. Children needed to get out the drivers side rear door. My husband tried to open the door and could not. He gave it a good tug and the cable snapped. When we called our local Toyota dealership, they told us that the motor had to be replaced, to the tune of $2,000. It has not been repaired, since we can not afford that. Researching it on the internet, my husband found that there was a "safety notice" that went out to the dealerships, asking that they check the doors when the vans are in for routine maintainence, to ensure that a new center bracket has been put on the doors, to help alievate this problem. When he called up Toyota customer service to ask if we could find out if this was done, he was told no. They do not give that out, and if we had brought the car in for oil changes, it would have been checked. My husband does our oil changes, every 5,000 miles, so there was not need for us to take it in for maintainance. He asked if there was any type of warranty on it, since they would give us no information. He was told no, if we were prior Toyota owners, they would help us, but since this is our first Toyota product, they were willing to do nothing. Asking to speak with a manager did no good either. He was told they did not want to speak with him. Now, I am bringing the car to the dealership next week to have the steering checked out. It is sticking when you are turning the wheel. You have to manually turn it back. Not sure if I want to buy another Toyota product. They do not seem to be very reliable.
2004 Toyota sienne le, with only 56,000 miles, passenger side power sliding door made a grinding noise when it opened and now it will not close. Dealership repair costs are between $1,500 and $2,000. That's an outrage, to pay that much just to shut the darn door!
Right side power sliding door sticking. Must manually pull handle to get door to unlatch. Once the door is in motion, you can control(open/close) with key chain controller or both power buttons inside vehicle. Same problem if the door is in open position, door latch will not released with any power buttons, must manually pull handle to get door to unlatched. Dealer cleaned and lubed door on 8-29-2008 at 84,734 miles. Charged $21 for service. Later in evening same problem occured, I took the Sienna back to dealership the next day. Service technician said it needed a new(door) motor and would cost $1,500. I was shocked since the day before they had claimed everything was ok and it was only $21. Needless to say, the door has not been fixed, I feel it is a major safety concern and it is sad to learn that there are a lot of people having the same problem. The problem seems to be consistent between 75,000 to 85,000 miles. Would appreciate if you could look into this problem.
A broken cable interferes with the proper operation of my sliding door and could make it difficult to exit the car in an emergency. The cable that opens and closes the passenger sliding door rusted and snapped a few weeks ago. I found that a lot of other customers have a similar issues and many of them commented that not only is the part expensive, but the replacement of the part also appears to be a major expense. It does not appear that this issue is covered by a recall, but the large number of complaints entered at NHTSA.gov does suggest that there is a systematic problem with this cable. I called the "Toyota customer experience center" three times in the last week. Each time, I waited on hold for ~45 minutes before hanging up. It does not appear that they have an E-mail address to register a complaint. Thus, I am writing to you.
Plastic sheathing on passenger power door, the only power door, dried out and cracked causing the cable wires to be exposed to the elements. As a result, the wires of the cable began to rust and fray and tangled in the door so that it was half opened and would neither open nor close even with the power off. We had to cut the cable off to get the tangled cable free of the door so we could close it. It is poor quality to have the plastic on the cable dry out and crack off so that the power door is unable to be used as a power door which is an option you have to pay extra for. We also had small children buckled into carseats at the time and had we not cut the cable off, we could not drive it as I said the door was stuck half open/half closed.
We purchased the new 2004 Toyota Sienna on or about August of 2004. In about late September of 2009 I noticed a popping sound coming from the driver's door when opening and closing it. It became progressively worse in the following weeks. I checked on-line and discovered it to be a common problem with other 2004, 05, 06, 07 and 08 Siennas. I had a 5 year extended warranty and called the Toyota customer service here in Hawaii and was told that the warranty had expired so they were not going to do anything. I asked if Toyota factory welds were only good for the life of the warranty and was not given an answer. I later discovered that a technical service bulletin tsbnv003-07 was issued by Toyota but not a recall. They claim that a notice about the problem was mailed to the owners but we have never received it and have been living at the same address for 18 years. The broken part is an engineering flaw with the design of the plate welded to the door that causes the door strap welds to break loose if the broken part is not replaced or repaired the door will swing freely open to it's extreme and close suddenly without restriction when opening or closing the door. Repairs typically cost around $2,000 outside of warranty with the replacement of the drivers side door. Re-welding the failure points is not recommended as they are prone to fail again sooner than replacing the door. This failure also occurs on the passenger door. Due to the cost of the repair I have made my own modifications by installing 3 nuts and bolts through the door into the broken part, but have noticed that the part has about a one inch cracked due to the original popping of the welds. I have yet to have the crack welded, if possible. Also see the following site for a better description and understanding of this and other similar problems: sites.google.com/site/toyotasiennadefects/.
A D V E R T I S E M E N T S
- St. Helena, CA, USA