One Toyota dealer reports that the wheel separated from a Camry after its lug nuts were under-tightened by a third-party contractor
3 hours ago
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The owners of 298 Toyota Camry sedans may want to invest in a torque wrench, as their lug nuts may not have been tightened to the correct specifications. Or they can wait for the automaker to remedy the issue, since it has initiated a recall campaign.
The issue affects 297 2023 Camrys and a single 2023 Camry Hybrid, but Toyota says that not all were intended for sale in the U.S. The automaker is also unable to determine how many of the vehicles potentially affected by this issue are likely to actually have loose wheel nuts.
That’s because a third party contractor is actually to blame for under-torquing the wheels, not Toyota. It says that all of the vehicles involved in this recall went through a specific processing facility for repairs. After being worked on, they were processed by a contractor, who is alleged to have under-tightened the nuts.
Read: Nissan Built Certain 2021 Rogue SUVs With Maxima Wheel Nuts
These vehicles were then sent to dealers, and Toyota received its first report related to this issue from a dealer on June 9. They found that there was excessive play on all wheels, and that multiple lug nuts were loose. As the automaker looked into the issue, it found more reports of loose nuts from dealers, and one reported that a wheel separated from the car during a dealership trade.
Naturally, owners, regulators, and common sense demand that the wheels remain on a vehicle when it is in motion. The failure of a wheel to do so constitutes a rather meaningful risk to safety, so Toyota is recalling the vehicles that passed through the processing facility.
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It started reaching out to the owners of these vehicles on June 15, alerting them to the issue. They were told not to drive their cars, and that a dealer would inspect and retorque the wheel nuts where necessary.
