I can't think of a better word than jerking or shuttering to describe what is happening. The truck is a 2002 Tacoma V6 automatic trans prerunner double cab TRD SR5. It has 135,000 miles on it.

The problem occurs when cruising between 40-70 miles per hour, (respectively). The jerking feels like it is going in and out of gear very abruptly (or something to that effect). It causes the whole drive-line/power-train/truck to feel like it is jerking or shuttering. It does this most often between loading and unloading the engine. For example, if I'm cruising at 45 MPH and then let off the throttle completely and then kinda feather back into the throttle, right at that moment it starts jerking pretty violently. But on the other hand if I am coasting at 45, let my foot off the throttle and then aggressively get back on the throttle, it will not jerk at all. When it does start to jerk all I have to do is give it about 50%-ish or more throttle and it stops. It also does it on inclines pretty much every time. The entire drive-shaft is newly rebuilt & balanced, double cardan, u-joints, carrier bearing, all new. I am not getting a check engine light either. This problem is driving me crazy. Any ideas on what this might be? I would greatly appreciate any input or direction to a thread which has covered this issue. Thanks,

Jason

Also, an very slight intermittent hesitation is present when accelerating from a complete stop. It feels similar to the jerking/shuttering but not nearly as bad.

 

Almost sounds like a classic torque converter lock-up clutch chattering....

 

Thanks for the reply. Figured it out yesterday, it was a miss-fire. For some reason it only miss-fired in a certain gear, at a certain load, and a certain rpm. And like I said it was detectable when taking off from a complete stop but hardly so if you didn't know the truck you probably wouldn't have noticed. The solution was changed the spark plugs and wires. Problem solved. My guess is one of the wires was failing. The good thing is now I know exactly what an ignition problem feels like.

 

Good to know...mine does something similar but its not very noticable yet...

I think I'm running original wires at 146k...

Thanks for sharing the results. How did you further diagnose it to come to the wires/plugs?

 

Mine was the same case, original plugs and wires. The weird thing was the left cylinder head had denso plugs and the right side had NGK plugs. I know they were all factory original because they all had that little symbol on the very top of the plug that indicates if it is original. I guess I shouldn't have said I figured it out. I have a friend who is an ASE certified master mechanic and I met up with him on his lunch hour yesterday. We went on a little test drive and when the truck started doing it's thing he said without doubt there's an ignition problem causing a miss-fire somewhere. So when I told him the plugs and wires had never been changed he said to start with that and if that didn't fix it to test the ignition coils to make sure none of them were arcing out. I replaced the plugs and wires with original equipment parts, kinda pricey, $115 for 6 plugs and three wires (it only has three wires by design) but it's great to have the truck running smooth again. So if yours gets worse, I would say start with the plugs and wires. After all we should be changing them out ever 60k for a reason. Ciao!

 

sounds like your torque converter to me

 

hey bro how did you fixing tat jerking problem cause my truck have tat jerking problem too when going on 45- 50 mph and it jerk.....

 

Here is how he fixed his. Try reading the whole thread next time.

That, and try actual English when asking a question.