Thermostat failure on the 2002 Toyota Rav4
Only 1 report 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 thermostat failure gets reported
There are 1 report of thermostat failure on the 2002 Toyota Rav4, 1 with a mileage attached. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 95,000 miles. It is the 32nd most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 150,400 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
Putting it right typically runs $250–$900 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.
The same failure, every year of the Toyota Rav4
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.
I am the original owner of a 2002 rav4 and have been taking it to toyota for service. As I was leaving work at 5pm one friday, my car would hard-shift into first and struggle even more to get to second, etc. I drove it straight to toyota carlsbad. They contacted me the following day after changing the transmission fluid. They said I needed a new transmission and computer. Come to find out there had been a service bulletin in 2006 that only toyota knew about that recognized the potential for transmission problems. I was not informed of this when I had the transmission serviced by toyota in 2007. The total cost to me would be $4800 without tax, which I could not afford. Since I needed my car for work and I take care of my elderly mother, I scrounged together the nearly $2000 for the computer replacement as well as the thermostat replacement (the idiot light code said it had a loose wire, and not total replacement!). I was told the transmission would definitely need to be replaced in a very short time, and they suggested I purchase another car very soon. The service bulletin should have been shared with me, the client. They knew…
Also reported on the 2002 Toyota Rav4
Control module (ECM/PCM/BCM) failure
Other powertrain problem
Complete transmission failure
Other engine problem
Other electrical problem
Harsh or jerky shifting
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 1 report 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 1 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 thermostat failure happen on the 2002 Toyota Rav4?
Across 1 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 150,000 miles. A quarter were filed before — and a quarter after —. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is thermostat failure on the 2002 Toyota Rav4?
1 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.0 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