teal.supra
Well-Known Member
Story time..
TL;DR: Create a relationship with your service tech.
Last season I broke one of my stock axles. The axle failed in a particularly unusual way, where it is still in place, but ripped the boot and produced a lot of play up and down in the axle itself.
The car could still be driven, and I didn't actually notice the failure until I saw differential fluid on my driveway, and then when I had it on a lift for something else, I checked and found the failure of the driver's side axle.
This is not a warranty claim situation. I knowingly said goodbye to my warranty the day I picked up the car, pulled the ECU and sent it to Finland. I straight line track this supra regularly, it's gone through a couple different setups, and I do some street things.
But I figured what the heck, I have a good relationship with my local Toyota service tech, doesn't hurt to ask. He worked on my 2021 supra and ultimately replaced the head and pistons. Then helped me get Toyota to buy it back.
When I told my tech what happened, his first question was "do you have your car lowered", and I thought that's a weird question but said yeah I have the HKS springs on there. His response surprised me "well I'm happy to try to warranty it, but we will need the stock suspension in there so that they don't try to deny the claim because of the suspension.".
Today I dropped the car off, for a potentially free axle replacement, and to get the stock springs put in. This is super advantageous to me because I need more room to squat when I'm launching off the line.
Point of my long story is that this relationship has saved me a lot of money. Most technicians are car guys like us, they want to work on a Supra more than any other Toyota that comes in, and requesting to talk to your technician one on one, is a great way to build that relationship.
TL;DR: Create a relationship with your service tech.
Last season I broke one of my stock axles. The axle failed in a particularly unusual way, where it is still in place, but ripped the boot and produced a lot of play up and down in the axle itself.
The car could still be driven, and I didn't actually notice the failure until I saw differential fluid on my driveway, and then when I had it on a lift for something else, I checked and found the failure of the driver's side axle.
This is not a warranty claim situation. I knowingly said goodbye to my warranty the day I picked up the car, pulled the ECU and sent it to Finland. I straight line track this supra regularly, it's gone through a couple different setups, and I do some street things.
But I figured what the heck, I have a good relationship with my local Toyota service tech, doesn't hurt to ask. He worked on my 2021 supra and ultimately replaced the head and pistons. Then helped me get Toyota to buy it back.
When I told my tech what happened, his first question was "do you have your car lowered", and I thought that's a weird question but said yeah I have the HKS springs on there. His response surprised me "well I'm happy to try to warranty it, but we will need the stock suspension in there so that they don't try to deny the claim because of the suspension.".
Today I dropped the car off, for a potentially free axle replacement, and to get the stock springs put in. This is super advantageous to me because I need more room to squat when I'm launching off the line.
Point of my long story is that this relationship has saved me a lot of money. Most technicians are car guys like us, they want to work on a Supra more than any other Toyota that comes in, and requesting to talk to your technician one on one, is a great way to build that relationship.
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