Unclassified problem on the 2004 Toyota 4RUNNER
7 crashes 6 injuries 13 of the 87 reports for this failure mention a crash, a fire, an injury or a death. Those are the owner's words on the complaint form, not a verified finding, and one report can mention more than one.
Only 51 reports for this mode came with an odometer reading, which is too few for percentiles to mean anything. The page is here because someone linked to it; treat the figures as anecdotes, and see the full report for this year instead.
When unclassified problem gets reported
Owners of the 2004 Toyota 4RUNNER report unclassified problem at a median of 137,500 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 87,500 miles and a quarter after 165,000 miles, from 51 reports that carried an odometer reading.
It is the 53rd most-reported problem on this model year.
The mileage distribution
The reported range runs from 55,000 miles at the tenth percentile to 200,000 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 145,000 miles across the middle 80% of reports.
A spread this wide points at use rather than design. Towing, climate, service history and city mileage all move a failure like this, so the median is a weak guide to any individual car.
2% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 54,000 miles | 86,368 miles | 138,000 miles | 165,466 miles | 199,000 miles |
Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.
What a percentile can and cannot tell you here
These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.
What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.
Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.
What happens, and what it costs
Of these reports, 7 a crash and 6 an injury are mentioned. Owners write their own complaints and the agency does not verify them, so read this as what the reports say happened rather than as a confirmed count.
The same failure on other years
The same failure is reported on 25 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2022, at a median of 200 miles, and latest on the 1997 at 225,000 miles.
By volume the 2004 is the worst of them, which makes this a problem of this specific year rather than of the model as a whole.
If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.
Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens
What owners wrote
Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.
Traveling 55 MPH on ca interstate when car directly in front of me abruptly stopped. There was not enough time for me to stop, so I impacted the rear of the vehicle head on at approximately 45 MPH. Not one of the airbags in my vehicle deployed. Contacted toyota about this and they said it is their "opinion that the airbags should not have deployed in this situation." I asked them where the frontal impact sensors were, and was told directly under the headlights in the bumper. Well, both sensors were in the impacted area on my vehicle, the entire bumper and assembly is being replaced. The cost to repair the damage is $10,000.00 the owners manual says the airbags will deploy in a frontal crash at approximately 15 MPH, I was doing at least 45 MPH! Toyota refuses to admit the failure of the airbags, and now I will be driving an unsafe vehicle. *jb
Dt*: the contact stated while driving 50 MPH, the vehicle was involved in a collision with a guardrail. There was a 5 second delay in the deployment of the air bag, causing the contact and a passenger to hit the windshield. Both occupants incurred head injuries, lacerations, muscular injuries, and the contact incurred ocular injuries. The vehicle was considered a total loss, and a police report was taken. The vehicle was not inspected by a service dealer or private repair shop.
Malfunction in the center airbag sensor assembly in my vehicle has rendered the airbags inoperable. Sensor light came on two weeks ago. Toyota service garage said it would cost $545 to repair. No repair to date. Toyota indicated that it was only covered by 3-year warranty. *tr
Also reported on the 2004 Toyota 4RUNNER
Other body or interior problem
Rust or structural corrosion
Radiator or coolant leak
Other suspension problem
Other brake problem
Control arm, ball joint or bushing failure
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 87 reports is not enough to publish percentiles from. It stays reachable because somebody looking at this exact car would rather see the reports than be told there are none.
Complaints are voluntary, so 87 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.
Questions this page answers
At what mileage does unclassified problem happen on the 2004 Toyota 4RUNNER?
Across 51 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 137,500 miles. A quarter were filed before 87,500 miles and a quarter after 165,000 miles. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is unclassified problem on the 2004 Toyota 4RUNNER?
87 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 1.0 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.
What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars
Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed