MMT Gearbox fault / P0810 error code

[Simon1982]

Dear All,

I have just joined this forum to gather information that I am presenting to the DVSA regarding the MMT Gearbox fault.

I am the owner of a Toyota Verso Corolla 54 reg. Back in May this year I was driving my car home when I was turning into a new road my car had popped into and remained stuck in neutral, with the car being positioned halfway into the road. I tried and tried again to get the car going, including restarting the engine several times until after a few minutes the car managed to get in gear. Within a minute or two at the next junction the same thing happened again and AGAIN whilst I was moving along the road. Luckily for me it was just before the school run so the roads were not so busy.

Anyway, this issue has been documented in other posts on the forum so I am definitely not the only person to experience this. I also believe it affects several vehicles, not just the Corolla Verso. 

The next day I took the car to a Toyota garage to see if they could diagnose and resolve the issue. They charged me £95 for diagnostics and came back with the following fault:

"CO full diag and found P0810 recorded in system. Followed diag process and concluded reqs mechanical repair. New clutch, actuator and ECU. 7.2hours"

I will try and be brief with what followed on from here so I can get onto the main purpose of my post:

I looked up this issue on the forum and found that there was a Customer Satisfaction Survrey for this very fault as well as subsequent technical bulletins. It seems like there CSC was a soft recall that I believe should have been a hard recall on the fault. What happened to me was dangerous and there have been cases I have read on the forums/internet of this even happening whilst driving on the motorway. 

I contacted Toyota Customer Relations to ascertain whether the CSC was carried out on the vehicle as well as the technical bulletin. Indeed the CSC was carried out on my vehicle to resolve this very issue yet a mere 30,000 miles later the fault appears, perhaps for the first time on this vehicle.

Toyota refused to rectify the situation free of charge...no surprises. Basically they said the Customer Service Campaign was done way back in 2009 and they would only provide a warrenty on the work till 2012. 

I then decided to pursue this further by reporting what I consider to be a dangerous fault to DVSA who have so far been most sympathetic. In normal circumstances vehicle age would be an issue but thier concern is that this particular fault has nothing to do with the age of the vehicle, especially as the parts involved were replaced back in 2009. Toyota responded to the DVSAs enquiries by stating that I "may" have had warnings that this issue would occur and that I would have had time to take it the garage to resolve and as such cannot be classed as a sudden dangerous issue. There was no warning lights and I am not sure how you could be warned that your gearbox will pop in and get stuck in neutral all of a sudden.

Unsatisfied with Toyota's response, the DVSA have sent in followup questions which has now lead to  Toyota making contact with me to get my vehicle in for inspection. This has yet to be arranged. I rang the DVSA and they confirmed that I should agree to this being done.

Now to the purpose of my post. This MMT issue has been going on for many years now and there are significant number of people affected by it, many of whom will have since had their car either repaired, sold on or scrapped, etc. If anybody has experienced this issue could I encourage you to contact DVSA as it seems like they are finally taking this issue very seriously. The more genuine evidence we have on this the more likely it will be that Toyota will be forced to do what they should have morally done along time ago.

The fact the vehicle has had the Customer Satisfaction Campaign carried out and still experience the same issue is of concern.

Please feel free to post your experiences here too and I will pass them onto the gentleman I am in contact with at the DVSA.

If you are reading this line, I thank you for your time.

Simon

DVSA website to report serious safety defect: https://www.gov.uk/vehicle-recalls-and-faults/report-a-serious-safety-defect

PS I have attached the relevant Customer Satisfaction Survey and Technical Bulletins here. These documents I have obtained through other postings on this forum

CP-0009T-0113-EN (2).pdf

Toyota Clutch grease TSB (1) (3).pdf

CustomerServiceCampaign.pdf

[arousa]

There is no warning. It happens out of the blue. No lights, no signs that the vehicle has any problems of any kind. It happens and you are stuck, and in very dangerous situations.

Unfortunately I am in Spain, so not much help to you, or me. 

And as well, I am an ASE certified automotive master technician(USA) and what Toyota proposes as a repair is absurd. They want to replace 3 (even 4) parts, and very expensive parts. I was quoted over 2000€. Parts of which some are mechanical, and one is the TCM( transmission control module). Impossible all these parts would fail at the same time. Impossible all are faulty and would require replacement. The problem is that Toyota has no clue why this happens. Our MMT transmission is a normal manual transmission, which will have the clutch wear out with kilometers. In a normal trans you would replace the clutch and be on your way. But the problem here maybe that when the clutch shows some wear, the clutch position sensor doesn't understand the wear and it sends the rest of the system into a spiral. And they have no clue how to fix it. Changing all these parts is also only a temporary fix, as it will happen again. 

The two actuactors, which replace your manual input for clutch and gear selection, are mechanical pieces. They do have electrical motors and sensors on them however. The clutch position sensor being one on the clutch actuactor. Why would these mechanical components need to be replaced? unless a motor or sensor goes bad, but these parts could be purchased for much cheaper then replacing the entire unit. Why replace a mechanical actuator which can be tested to see if it is properly working or not? And why the TCM? I could see if the TCM would have a fault. But then why change the 2 actuactors and the clutch? The clutch can also be checked for wear. They are just replacing all parts involved in their crap system.

It just seems to me that they have no clue, they themselves do not understand the system and their way of dealing with it is changing all of it's components. Surprised they don't change the transmission as well. 

My car has been sitting for some years now. Car looks new. Can't drive it. I refuse to spend 2000€ on a repair that is not a repair but a swapping out of wearable parts that shouldn't be. I am considering swapping in a true manual trans or purchasing a true automatic transmission and swapping that in. It is absurd. I hope that in your country something can be done and then it forces toyota to repair it in the rest of the EU. And yes, it is a problem in all of the models with MMT. I own a corolla sedan D4D MMT which was built in the UK, interestingly enough. 

 

 

[Simon1982]

Arousa,

Thank you for your post. It has been enlightening and, at the same time, somewhat depressing to read.

I do not have a mechanical background myself but what you write seems fairly plausible, ie the fact that all 3 or 4 components failing is just ludicrous.

The only thing I can try to do, with your permission, is to pass on your post to the DVSA.

In response to DVSA queries with Toyota, Toyota rang me to get me to agree to do some further diagnostic testing on the vehicle. I recall a couple of interesting points about this conversation.

First, the guy from Toyota said the situation was "political" because it involves Toyota Europe and Toyota Japan. I didn't quite understand what he meant by this.

He also said that the diagnostic test that I had ordered on the vehicle, costing £95, was only preliminary or basic (I can't remember which one of the two words he used) and that further testing is required to ascertain exactly what is wrong with the vehicle. Reading between the lines here and putting together the information in your post above, it seems like they will actually have to test which exact components have failed. My concern now is that it could just be the clutch that is worn and they will report this back to the DVSA and totally wash their hands of the situation. If this is the case I am sure there will have been many customers who have been charged for replacing all the Actuator, Clutch and Computer unit at major costs, when indeed it could have just been only one component failing. I am now concerned this will be Toyota's way of worming their way out of the problem with the DVSA investigation.

Regardless of this, the issue is a major and serious fault that happens without any prior warning.

I am concerned that this issue has been investigated previously and probably at a time when there were a lot more of these faulty vehicles out on the road. Although DVSA said they have had this issue brought to the attention in the past but MAY take a different view of things now.

But then even if DVSA rule this as a recall, then what can they do if there is no fix? Will they agree to replace the whole transmission? or replace the car? And what about all those customers in the past that have paid out for this repair or indeed prematurely scrapped their cars because it became beyond economical repair?

Although the issue is slowly going away merely due the fact that these vehicles are now getting old, it still leaves a major injustice for the existing owners and for all those in the past that had to pay out for this repair. It also remains the case that there are vehicles out there that are potential death traps. Toyota knows all this and that is why I suspect it is "political"

I only hope that Toyota don't try and pull the wool over the eyes of the DVSA and also hope the DVSA have the powers to do something about this injustice.

I urge anybody reading these posts and who has had the same issue to contact DVSA as soon as possible.
https://www.gov.uk/vehicle-recalls-and-faults/report-a-serious-safety-defect

If anybody has contacted DVSA please could they let me know through this forum.

If possible I would also like to try and take this up with a high profile consumer rights organisation such as MoneySavingExperts or similar (any ideas welcome) to try and bring enough attention for Toyota/DVSA to take action.

Once again, thank you for the information you have provided in your post.

[FROSTYBALLS]

On 8/3/2018 at 3:37 PM, Simon1982 said:

Please feel free to post your experiences here too and I will pass them onto the gentleman I am in contact with at the DVSA

Toyota Owners Club isn't an appropriate medium to collect this information, and there are implications around use of data by a third party.

If members within the UK have experienced similar issues with their current vehicle, then they may choose to report the problems on an individual basis to DVSA using the system that is designed to deal with these enquiries.  This is the route that should be used.

Members outside the UK should determine what methods are in place within their own country to raise these types of issues, and should use those channels to report accordingly.

[Simon1982]

That is fair enough. I can fully understand your position on this matter.

[dirarko]

I have a 2008 mmt  for 6 years now. I only recently had some issues with the transmission. I replaced the actuator motor as well as the clutch and then initialized the clutch (first time in 6 years). It ran fine for a couple of months then suddenly it started to switch to "N" without any reason, tried to learn and initialize the clutch couple of times but it didn't help. I then replaced the transmission control module unit in the glove compartment and since then it's running without any issues. 

I bought the "Toyota tech stream " software and a mini vci connector. Tried initiating and learning the clutch and it worked, you can also do it manually with some particular steps:

http://developer.ps/data/toyota-multi-mode-transmission-mmt.pdf

 

[Simon1982]

On 9/6/2018 at 7:27 PM, dirarko said:

I have a 2008 mmt  for 6 years now. I only recently had some issues with the transmission. I replaced the actuator motor as well as the clutch and then initialized the clutch (first time in 6 years). It ran fine for a couple of months then suddenly it started to switch to "N" without any reason, tried to learn and initialize the clutch couple of times but it didn't help. I then replaced the transmission control module unit in the glove compartment and since then it's running without any issues. 

I bought the "Toyota tech stream " software and a mini vci connector. Tried initiating and learning the clutch and it worked, you can also do it manually with some particular steps:

http://developer.ps/data/toyota-multi-mode-transmission-mmt.pdf

 

Was the car suddenly going into neutral whilst you were driving? 

[dirarko]

Yes, happened once with me, and once with my wife.But lucky we were driving in the city in a very low speed.

[Simon1982]

Are you in the UK? I know your profile says not but just double checking. IF so, this should be reported to the DVSA. Not sure what the equivalent body is abroad.

[dirarko]

No, outside of the UK. I tried with the dealership but they denied to take any responsibility. We don't have any equivalent organization to  DVSA. I was thinking to report this issue directly to Toyota but didn't know where to do so.

 

[FROSTYBALLS]

On 9/13/2018 at 8:44 PM, dirarko said:

I was thinking to report this issue directly to Toyota but didn't know where to do so.

Would need to report it directly to the organisation that imports Toyotas to your country.

[dirarko]

I did so, I also mentioned that I am doing the maintenance outside of toyota's dealerships, and some parts are aftermarket or used. They didn't reply yet, but there is chance they will blame this on aftermarket parts. Though the faulty part is original Toyota part

[dirarko]

Hello all,

No response from Toyota whatsoever. The problem just happened to me again this morning. I was unable to drive the car, luckily I had my laptop and a VCI connector. Connected the car to Toyota TechStream, and saw the attached error details. I then reinitialized the clutch position and was finally able to drive. The fact that this is happening while I was driving the car is very scary and that's why I decided to sell my beloved corolla as parts. Too bad I really like this car

COROLLA_1ZRFE _22-11-2018 080223.TSE

ErrorReport_COROLLA_1ZRFE _22-11-2018 080223.TSE

[dirarko]

More useful documents on how to fix the MMT clutch actuator:

developer.ps/data/INF12215_GB.PDF

&

developer.ps/data/Toyota Clutch grease TSB.pdf

[Aurisnik]

Hi Simon, could you give an update please as to what happened with this situation? I have a 2010 Auris MMT which has refused to engage Drive a few times, fortunately only while sitting on the drive at home. I'm about to consult a local garage that specialises in auto gearboxes but wondered if you got anywhere with Toyota and DVSA?

[Pp123]

Hello Simon and Aurisnik,

I also have had the same issue with my Toyota Auris and MMT going into Neutral. I had the very scary situation of being on the motorway when it has happened too.

I wondered if you could update me with what happened with the DVSA and Toyota.

Many thanks

 

[Catlover]

Simon the original poster has not visited this forum since October 17th 2018, almost 3 years ago.

[FROSTYBALLS]

To report a possible safety defect, please use the following process to contact DVSA: https://www.gov.uk/vehicle-recalls-and-faults/report-a-serious-safety-defect

 

 

 

[jawed]

Hi Simon,

I hope you are still in touch with the above mentioned bodies and looking for more evidence for the case you have explained above!

I have a Toyota Auris Semi-automatic 2007 which looks great and used to drive very smoothly. However, all of a sudden nearly three days ago I was waiting in a traffic light that I experienced the gear shifting to Neutral without any prior warning!!! I still haven't seen any warning but have gone through stalling in at least two junctions in one day.

I took the vehicle to Toyota for diagnostics and they charged me £105 and later advised me to change five parts which cost over £3,500. 

The reason I am writing here is to appreciate the efforts you have made so far in contacting the DVSA and the Toyota and raise our vices for good.

Thanks a lot. 

Jawed

[FROSTYBALLS]

1 hour ago, jawed said:

Hi Simon,

I hope you are still in touch with the above mentioned bodies and looking for more evidence for the case you have explained above!

The OP (Simon) hasn't visited the Club since October 2018, so you're unlikely to receive a rep!y.