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1998 TOYOTA AVALON — Complaint #550715

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NHTSA Complaint about SERVICE BRAKES, AIR:CONTROLS:HAND CONTROL/VALVE filed August 22, 2005

NHTSA complaint #550715 (ODI reference 10133740) concerns a 1998 TOYOTA AVALON and was filed on August 22, 2005. The owner reports the failure occurred on April 1, 2004. The vehicle had 75,000 miles on the odometer at the time of the incident. The report was geocoded to Texas based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as service brakes, air:controls:hand control/valve, one of NHTSA's standardized taxonomy codes used to group defect patterns across make, model, and year.

The filer flagged the following severity indicators: crash: no, fire: no, injuries: 0, fatalities: 0. No crash, fire, or fatality was associated with this report, which places it in the early-warning stream rather than the priority-review stream. Because a VIN was supplied, this complaint is tied to a specific vehicle and not just a model-year cohort.

Individual complaints are consumer-submitted and unverified by NHTSA engineers — the agency's role at this stage is to collect, index, and make them searchable. What matters for federal action is the pattern: when many owners of the same TOYOTA AVALON cohort independently describe similar service brakes, air:controls:hand control/valve failures, defect investigators have grounds to open a PE and request manufacturer data. Related filings for the same vehicle and component appear below, and the detail page for the full 1998 TOYOTA AVALON shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.

Vehicle
1998 TOYOTA AVALON
Component
SERVICE BRAKES, AIR:CONTROLS:HAND CONTROL/VALVE
State
Texas
Mileage
75,000 mi

Complaint Description

ON A 98 TOYOTA AVALON XLS: THE A/C AND HEATING SYSTEM SHUTS DOWN COMPLETELY OCCASIONALLY. THE FRONT AND REAR DEFOGGERS FAIL ALSO. WHEN THE SHUT DOWN OCCURS, THE AIR VENTS EMIT VERY HOT AIR, EVEN THOUGH THE THERMOSTAT IS SET FOR A/C. I ALMOST HAD AN ACCIDENT WHEN IT STARTED RAINING AND THE DEFOGGERS FAILED TO OPERATE. IT APPEARS TO BE AN ELECTRICAL WIRING DEFECT FOR WHICH I HAVE APPEALED TO TOYOTA TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY,BUT WITHOUT ANY SUCCESS

Complaint Details

NHTSA Complaint ID 550715
ODI Number 10133740
Date Filed August 22, 2005
Failure Date April 1, 2004
VIN 4T1BF18B3WU

Source: NHTSA Vehicle Complaints Database. Component taxonomy and severity codes are standardized by NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation.