What this site is, and what it isn’t.

The Tundra V35A Tracker is an independent research project that aggregates publicly-available data about the 3rd-generation Toyota Tundra (model years 2022+) and its V35A-FTS engine, with particular focus on NHTSA recall campaigns 24V381 and 25V767 (Toyota campaigns 23TB05 and 24TA07).

It is run by a single owner-researcher. It is not affiliated with Toyota Motor Corporation, Toyota Motor North America, Lexus, Carvana, Carfax, or NHTSA.

Sources

• NHTSA recalls API— the analytical spine. Recall status (Open / Remedied / Incomplete) is what tells us whether an individual VIN’s engine has been replaced under Toyota’s recall. Public data, redistributed freely.
• NHTSA vPIC — VIN decoder. Used to populate model year, engine code, drivetrain, and hybrid status for each VIN.
• NHTSA complaints database — used to identify common failure modes, mileage at failure, and geographic distribution.
• Toyota §573 quarterly remedy reports — public regulatory filings that track recall remedy progress nationally.
• Third-party used-vehicle inventory — factual data (VIN, mileage, asking price, observation date) about 3rd-gen Tundras currently for sale. Aggregated, not reproduced verbatim. We do not deep-link to individual listings.
• Owner self-reports — both submissions via the on-site Report your engine form and aggregates from public community spreadsheets and owner groups. Always anonymized (VINs masked, names stripped) before publication.

Anonymization

Full VINs are stored locally but displayed publicly only as the last 8 characters (model-year code, plant code, and serial); the leading 9 characters (manufacturer + descriptor + check digit) are masked. Owner names, addresses, dealer-specific identifiers, email addresses, and phone numbers are stripped from every dataset before it is checked into the public repository.

If you are an owner who can identify a specific VIN as yours and would like it removed from the public inventory view, see the contact page.

Update cadence

Inventory snapshots and recall-status checks run automatically on a 15-minute interval. NHTSA recalls and complaints are refreshed on a slower cadence (typically weekly). Per-VIN recall status reflects the most recent successful poll; Toyota updates its lookup tool on its own schedule and brief disagreements between this site and Toyota’s own portal can occur in the hours after a remedy is applied.

Methodology & limitations

Honest data work means saying what the dataset can’t do, not just what it can. Three caveats apply to every chart and table on this site:

• Sampling.Carvana inventory, NHTSA complaints, and voluntary owner submissions are not a random sample of 3rd-gen Tundras. Carvana skews toward off-lease, trade-in, and dealer-flipped trucks. NHTSA complaints skew toward owners who had a bad enough experience to file. Owner submissions skew toward owners who found this site. Every result here conditions on “appeared in one of these sources,” not on “exists in the world.”
• Denominator. Toyota does not publish unit-weighted V35A production totals. We have a numerator (reported failures) and a recall-eligible cohort, but no public denominator for the global fleet. We do not compute a true failure rate, and you should be suspicious of anyone who does.
• Causation.A “closed” recall is not necessarily an engine swap. Toyota’s remedy procedure is inspect-first: dealers check for machining debris and only replace the engine if it’s found. Per Toyota’s own §573 filing, the estimated defect rate is ~1% of recall-eligible VINs. Most closed recalls were inspections that cleared the truck, not engine replacements. The only way to confirm a specific replacement is owner documentation.

The point of consolidating this data isn’t to compute a failure rate Toyota won’t. It’s to make the recall scope, the complaint patterns, and the manufacturer’s own remedy choice legible in one place. The forward-looking argument — “how many will fail” — is what the recall itself implies. Replacing engines outright instead of inspecting them is a strong prior.

What this site does not claim

• It does not assert a vehicle-level failure rate. Anyone who tells you they know the true V35A failure rate is guessing — Toyota and NHTSA have the only authoritative denominators, and neither has published a unit-weighted lifetime failure rate.
• It does not allege defects beyond those Toyota has acknowledged in its own §573 filings.
• It is not legal, financial, or mechanical advice. If you believe your vehicle is unsafe, contact a Toyota dealer or file a report with NHTSA.

Corrections welcome

Found something wrong, missing, or out-of-date? Get in touch. The maintainer cares more about being accurate than being right.