Last night, while driving my 1954 Willys to Harbor Freight to buy a foam-cannon for my pressure washer so I can prep our Pontiac Aztek for sale, I spotted a classic automotive breakdown. A vehicle was on the shoulder of the road with its front left wheel having detached from the chassis, and of course it was the 3rd-gen Toyota 4Runner — known by some as the 3Runner for obvious reasons.
I stopped to have a look, and to assure the rather frazzled owner that this isn’t a huge deal, and the’ll probably just need some new ball joints and a few brake parts, and they’ll be on their way. I can’t imagine it’ll cost more than $500, I told them.
Here you can see where the front suspension dragged on the road — there’s a little gray line on the road:
And here’s the carnage; look at how the knuckle separated from both ball joints!
This is a design flaw that has affected far too many 3Runners. Yes, it’s avoidable, and yes it can happen to other vehicles, but it happens way too often on 3rd Gen 4Runners. It pretty much never happens on Jeeps, but Jeeps have other issues.
The Jeep Cherokee XJ’s major flaw? The neutral safety switch tend to give up the ghost, as does the Crankshaft position sensor. XJs are also super under-cooled due to radiator packaging constraints, and once they overheat, there’s often a head-crack between the valves.
So for today’s Autopian Asks, I ask you: What are some examples of well-know weak-links in the auto world?
6.0L Super Duty. No words needed.
The Mercedes M116 and M117 V8s from 1974 till 1989 have a catastrophic failure mode. The timing chain guides are nylon, and get old and brittle. When the timing chain tensioner loses its ability to hold oil with the engine off, at startup before oil pressure tensions the chain, it slaps around and can break the brittle guides. One of them in particular has a nasty habit of landing between the chain and the crank sprocket. Engine jumps time, pistons get up close and personal with valves, engine is trashed.
I narrowly avoided that catastrophe. Recommendation is to change the chain, guides, and cam sprockets every 10 years.
Since it’s fresh in my mind the modern Fiat 500 has issues with the Bluetooth module failing and draining the battery and the trunk lock switches fail. The official fix is to buy a complete trunk handle and license plate light assembly, the cheap fix is to pry open the assembly and replace the switch with a modified minivan part
Stealth / 3000GT:
Capacitors fail. They fail in the HVAC controls, the tach, the speedo and the ECS control. I’ve experienced 3 of the 4 in 6 months of Stealth ownership.
E46 BMW:
Window regulators, oil filter housing gaskets, valve cover gaskets, crankcase ventilation system parts, vanos seals. Should I go on?
Mercedes OM642 Oil Cooler, OM642 timing chains in non-sprinter applications. BMW N57 timing chain. BMW M57 Valve cover gasket. BMW M57 vacuum lines.
I never overheated my XJ CHerokee but I did not install crappy electric radiator fans with a manual switch that I could not be bothered to turn on to prevent overheating like you did.
Getting that POS off the road to a shop to do your $500 fix will cost by itself about $400. That is if it didn’t rip off anything near the bottom like oil pan, transfer case, transmission or front differential.
Early 80s Saabs when they changed the metal the starter ring gear was made of. Getting that fixed required taking the engine and transmission out! Fortunately, I had a warranty on it.
Saab 9-2X – Leaky oil gaskets and quarter panel rust that will eat the shock towers to death. same for mid 2000’s subaru wagons
VW Sportwagen – thing is a wind vane in cross wind conditions above 45 mph. Like worse than a minivan. also, early rust .
BMW- Every BMW I have encountered either as an owner or family/friends has had at least 1 overheat issue due to burst rad/heater pipes or radiators.
Weak points I know of off the top of my head:
-Head gaskets on the Ford 3.8L V6 until Ford FINALLY switched to an MLS gasket in 1998
-Head gaskets on the Chrysler 2L 4cyl starting in 1995 and was fixed when they switched to an MLS gasket a few years later. Thanks Bob Eaton for that stupid instance of cost cutting (that engine was supposed to get the MLS gasket from the start, but didn’t because of a cost cutting decision Bob Eaton made. This is the same Bob Eaton who fucked the old Chrysler by selling out to Mercedes in the “Merger of Equals”. Fuck You Bob Eaton.
-Tie rods on the Ford Escort of the 1990s were weak
-1st gen Saab 9-3 had HVAC control knob shafts that would break because they were a crappy, cheap GM design
-Ford Escort of the 1990s would have a thermostat housing that had a coolant bypass that would fail, causing the engine to get cooled too much
-PT Cruiser has a thermostat housing that was prone to cracking/leaking after it gets around 6 years old
-Rust issues on Hondas made in the 1980s and earlier
-Rust issues on Mazdas from the 2000s.
-The entire HT4100 V8 engine in any Cadillac was a weak point for multiple reasons.
I am surprised that no one has mentioned this yet, but the turbos on 1.8 L and 1.4 L VW 4-cylinders has a wastegate actuator that’s a ticking time bomb waiting to fail. VW won’t sell the actuator separately, which means a full replacement of the turbo assembly for most people. I have heard rumours that one can find the Bosch actuator, but haven’t looked too closely myself since my 2019 Golf with the 1.4 L is still chugging away for now.
Ford Macpherson strut bearings. Many years ago, I got a call from my wife’s cousin. He had a flat tire and needed help. I drove over and discovered that the tire was flat because the spring had broken and speared the tire. This was on a second gen Taurus. I figured the easiest way to repair it was to get a complete replacement strut, so I went to the parts store. The counter guy told me that this happened all the time on those Tauruses (Taurii?). After fixing the car, I took the old strut apart and the Torrington bearing was completely seized. That caused the spring to fatigue and eventually fail. The bearing wasn’t a real bearing but a cheap plastic thing that was destined to fail. Ford had a recall where they installed a metal guard to prevent the spring from spearing the tire – thanks for stepping up, Ford!
Fast forward 15 years and my wife complained that her XC60 was making a strange noise from the front suspension. I took a look and it had a broken spring. I became suspicious when the dealer had all the parts to fix it in stock – sure enough, the same shitty plastic bearing with FoMoCo stamped on it!
For FSJs, it’s the power rear window. When, not if, that stops working it means several hours of uncomfortable fighting with it to get it down, then several more hours of trying to figure out where in the convoluted mess of wiring the fault is.
> Jeeps have other issues
COTD
Mercedes’ biodegradable wiring harness, I was 18 and had the sweetest 300te I could afford (never mind those rust holes). I spent 2 years chasing electrical issues that were never fully resolved. The buyer was able to fix some faulty grounds and said that set everything right. I would probably be better equipped to diagnose now, but that still haunts me.
BMW e36 plastic cooling hoses, ze Germans will always find a way to taunt me for having such large, American hands.
The R107’s V8 engine’s timing chain guards are made of plastic that cracks and shatters with age. Sometimes a chunk ends up caught in the chain, with poor results.
Long time reader, first time poster – 2013 BMW X3 Timing Chain Guide degradation leading to engine failure – experienced all of this personally. My wife (her car) and I got home from a four-hour road trip and I could hear what sounded like a faint whine/grind from the engine. In my paranoia from years of owning BMWs, I went down the rabbit hole and found about the issue which, at the time, was still not formally recognized by BMW but was rampant. I got an appointment with BMW the next day and the issue had developed into a full blown knock – when the guy said ‘come on in, we’ll drive it and see what it’s doing’ I just told him ‘You won’t need to do that…’. He started the car, turned it back off and said, ‘we’re not going anywhere in this, there’s a rod knocking’ (which at this point, I knew). I asked them how bad it would be, to which they responded, ‘we’re running a special on those engines’ (red flag) – total was going to be $7300 for full new long block and all labor, which at the time was as good as I was going to do. The next day, they called to say they couldn’t honor that price and it would be $13k. I went to the dealership, played the ‘I’d like to speak to the parts director’ card, got the price back down after some arguing and saying things like ‘so BMW engines only last 100k miles, that’s what you’re saying?’ really loudly in the service waiting area. The full engine replacement was completed. Three months later – check engine light. They diagnosed it as the turbo going out and had the nerve to say ‘yeah we could’ve done that while we were doing the engine for like $400 but since we have to remove it all again it’ll be $1600’ (they never offered this during the engine replacement). We did not have this service performed. Two weeks later, the sunroof leaked, cooked the airbag sensor in the passenger seat, and we traded it in on a golf Alltrak that never gave us any issues. To add insult to injury, once BMW did finally acknowledge this point of failure, there was a reimbursement program for any out of pocket costs due to the degrading timing chain guides causing engine failure. The mileage cutoff for this was 90k miles – my wife’s car had 105k miles at the time of the issue and there was no pro-rating or partial reimbursement. We will never again own a modern BMW.
My Boss’s old Tundra had the same control arm failure. The truck did have over 400,000 km on it at the time though
The well known problems I have personally experienced:
On the 1st gen Toyota Sequoia, the rear hatch handle WILL fail. Even the fancy all-metal aftermarket ones – I just took one out of mine, it just bent instead of snapping. It’s an easy fix, fortunately. Also known for failing ball joints but I haven’t encountered that one personally thankfully.
5.7 Hemi-powered jeeps like to develop exhaust leaks at the manifold because they use itty bitty little stud bolts.
NC Miatas tend to crack their coolant reservoirs eventually.
On GMT800 trucks, the 4L60E is a wear item.
986 Boxsters will need water pumps and the front intake cleaned out, they like to hoover up debris and that can clog the radiators.
2nd gen Mazda3s like to cook their transmission control module, but it’s a super easy fix, took me less than a half hour and was the only failure that car ever had over 100k of driving.
The most reliable cars I have owned are my NA Miata track car, my 95 Civic (my first car in college), and my 2012 Mazda3. Those are/were great cars.