The Complete Guide To Toyota Gas Pedals: Teardown, Pictures, Toyota's Fix, Analysis, And Commentary

Paul Niedermeyer
by Paul Niedermeyer

Here’s TTAC’s and the web’s only complete guide to Toyota’s gas pedals (so far), with tear downs, pictures, analysis, explanation, the shim fix, and commentary, all consolidated into one portal:

Part 1: Exclusive: TTAC Takes Apart Both Toyota Gas Pedals: Tear down of both the recalled CTS pedal assembly and the non-recalled Denso pedal assembly. Note: Assumptions and conclusions in this initial tear down lack the more complete understanding of the importance of the friction arm aspect of the CTS unit.

Part 2: Toyota Gas Pedal Fix Explained – With Exclusive Photos: Describes Toyota’s proposed fix for the recalled CTS gas pedal assembly, with detailed photos and graphics. Explains the significance of the friction arm assembly and its limitations.

Part 3: Toyota Gas Pedal Fix Simulated – Friction Reduced, By Too Much?: TTAC simulates the fix prescribed by Toyota for the recalled CTS pedal assembly, and notes how the fix changes the degree of friction, and the possible unintended result. With detailed pictures

Part 4: Why Toyota Must Replace Flawed CTS Gas Pedal With Superior Denso Pedal: Detailed analysis with pictures of the two pedal assemblies, an explanation as to why the Denso design is superior, and a call for having all CTS pedals replaced with the Denso pedal.

Part 5: TTAC Does The Toyota Pedal Shim Fix: Stop Gap Solution At Best: Toyota’s solution is carried out here with detailed pictures, the whole Toyota document detailing the fix, and our commentary.

Part 6: Toyota Floor Mat/Gas pedal Recall Includes Computer Reflash And Trimming Of Gas Pedals: Info on the details of the floor mat/gas pedal interference recall.

Part 7: Toyota Recall Creates Unintended Accelerator Consequences: As predicted in Part 4 (above), the CTS shim fix reduces the carefully designed amount of friction required for comfortable and smooth pedal action to the point where pedal action may now be jerky and potentially unsafe.

(Thanks to you-know-who-you-are for access to these parts and info)

Paul Niedermeyer
Paul Niedermeyer

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  • Vortex0606 Vortex0606 on Mar 24, 2010

    I am so sick of people like the person who commented above. Toyota has an issue with their vehicles that is a safety related issue and it needs to be fixed. Did the guy who commented above actually read the analysis done in this Blog? If so I guess he did not understand it too well because he is still living under the floor mat with Toyota. I work for one of the automakers and know that we would never try and ignore this issue at ANY cost!!!!

  • S.A.E. S.A.E. on Apr 09, 2010

    Paul,,,after looking over most of the comments on TTAC it seems obvious to me that few of you understand what the shim does. Part of this is due to incorrect & misleading drawings made by Toyota ( and the A.P.). Installing the shim ELIMINATES the contact between the frictional elements which therefore gets rid of any "sticking" problem and it also ELIMINATES their frictional effects! That is why there are reports of "soft" pedal operation. I will try to explain the pedal operation... the pedal arm pushes against the spring which pushes against the rocker arm, the spring force is reacted at the other end by contact of the friction surfaces which results in drag when the pedal arm moves. When a thick shim is inserted the spring will bottom-out the rocker arm ON THE SHIM and the friction pads will not be in contact! A thin shim would of course have no effect; it's an on or off situation...

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
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