Brake line, hose or caliper failure on the 2001 Toyota Tundra
1 crash 4 injuries 5 of the 10 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.
When brake line, hose or caliper failure gets reported
Owners of the 2001 Toyota Tundra report brake line, hose or caliper failure at a median of 200,000 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 120,000 miles and a quarter after 200,000 miles, from 8 reports that carried an odometer reading.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 115,000 miles. It is the 15th most-reported problem on this model year.
The mileage distribution
The reported range runs from 100,000 miles at the tenth percentile to 200,000 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 97,785 miles across the middle 80% of reports.
When the reports scatter this far, the mileage is telling you about how these cars were driven more than about the part itself.
0% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 101,865 miles | 119,500 miles | 199,443 miles | 199,500 miles | 199,650 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, 1 a crash and 4 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.
Putting it right typically runs $250–$1,600 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.
This mode is classified as critical, which means a failure can leave the car unable to stop, steer, or stay out of the way of traffic. It is weighted accordingly in the risk score.
The same failure on other years
The same failure is reported on 8 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2008, at a median of 15,000 miles, and latest on the 2001 at 200,000 miles.
By volume the 2000 carries the most reports, with 22; the 2001 has 10. A mode that appears across most years of a model is usually a design choice rather than a bad batch.
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.
Bolt holding driver side brake caliper (front) was found missing. This bolt is one of four that hold the two caliper sides (inner and outer) together. Called local toyota dealership and was told I had to buy the complete caliper assembly for $387 to get the bolt. I called the toyota national help line and they confirmed verbally that the last time they came across this problem the problem was solved by the purchase of a complete assembled caliper. The bolt is a 10mm x 1.25 x 90mm with a hardness stamp of "9".*jb
My girlfriend was driving my 2001 toyota tundra, traveling approx. 30-35 MPH, when all of the sudden she heard a terrible crashing sound, the passenger front side of the truck hit the ground and the truck became impossible to steer which forced the vehicle into a lane of oncoming traffic, thankfully nobody was traveling in it at the time. She got out of the truck to investigate and found that the front passenger tire & wheel had come completely off of the truck, as well as severing the brake line, when I arrived at the scene of the incident, I found that the ball joint had completely come unattached at the knuckle. *tr
2001 toyota tundra complaint: while I was driving in the city all of a sudden I lost 90% of my braking ability. After pulling over to the side and inspecting my front brakes I notice my left driver's side had fluid on the road and tire. Limping it home and on farther inspection the bracket that supports the flex line from the frame to bracket and the ridged line from the bracket to the brake caliper was rusted off, this caused the ridged line to fracture. After purchasing a new bracket I than needed to look at the passenger side to see exactly how to mount the new bracket, to my surprise the passenger side bracket was also rusted off. I am sure it would have been a short period of time before I loss my brakes again had I not inspected the passenger side. When notifying the dealer about it I was pretty much blown off as the only person with this problem there for I probably just imagined it. So I guess my complaint is recalling these trucks for an inspection of singular rust problem such as the spire tire bracket is a joke. These trucks are just simply road hazards and are going to get a lot of people killed if action is not taken…
Also reported on the 2001 Toyota Tundra
Rust or structural corrosion
Other body or interior problem
Other brake problem
Control arm, ball joint or bushing failure
Premature brake pad or rotor wear
Fuel tank, filler or EVAP failure
How far this goes
Complaints are voluntary, so 10 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 brake line, hose or caliper failure happen on the 2001 Toyota Tundra?
Across 8 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 200,000 miles. A quarter were filed before 120,000 miles and a quarter after 200,000 miles. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is brake line, hose or caliper failure on the 2001 Toyota Tundra?
10 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.4 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