Another Mass Reported Faulty Part on 2022 Toyota Tundra Adding to Growing List

I’m a pretty big guy for my average stats. 6 foot, 230 lbs., big shoulders, large claves, etc. And a big guy like me in a little Toyota Prius means that sometimes, I need to slide out of my seat instead of getting up. This is from either one of two things. 1, you can’t lift your own body weight, or 2, there is little headroom, and you literally have to shift your body before you get out.

Unfortunately, my head touches the headliner in my Prius because I hate driving with my seat low. Because of my sliding, I start to see more and more wrinkles on the edge of my seat instead of the passenger side.

While this shouldn’t cause your seat to break, the worst-case scenario is either your leather will start to chip, or if it is a foam seat like some GM pickups, it’ll little ray fall apart. However, expect it to be only your cushion and not your whole seat or the plastic trim. In any case, you’d have to be extremely large to have this problem and, in most cases, it’s just a matter of convenience rather than weight issues.

Speaking of issues, make sure you follow more of my recent articles so that you are up to date with any problems on the new Tundra like the wastegate issue circulating the internet.

However, a recent post on Facebook’s 2022+ Toyota Tundra Owners group shows just how easy it is to break the side plastic trims on these seats. Joel Williams said, “So this side seat panel broke. Would this be a warranty thing?”

Now realistically speaking, if interior pieces start to break within the first year of production, that isn’t a good sign. We have all seen the videos of ‘90s Audis literally falling apart from the inside once you push the over-engineered cup holder out. Thankfully, the interior of the 2022 Toyota Tundra is said to be pretty solid and not have any creaking noises when you push against the dash.

However, this problem with the seat breaking is not just from one unlucky owner, the whole comment section is filled with people also expressing their same experience with this problem of the plastic seat side trim breaking.

The unofficial term that dealers use is called “fat sliding.” However, after doing some further research, almost none of the owners whose seats broke were heavy set. Let’s take a look and see what some of the owners who had their side plastic seat trims break had to say.

Jake Jenkins said, “Mine cracked the other day. Will get them to address it next month when I take it in for 15K(mile) service.” Again, after further research, jake isn’t a heavyset guy.

John Sweet said, “Mine did too. Poor design. Mine is getting fixed at my 10,000-mile service.” It is incredible to see just how many people had this issue. To put that into perspective, out of 15 main comments, 8 of them said their truck’s plastic seat trim also broke. The rest of the comments were about whether or not the guy was big or if it would be covered which brings us to the next part, would your bumper-to-bumper warranty cover this?

Now logically speaking, it should because as the name implies, it is from your bumper to bumper. However, in this case, it’s a hit or miss. For some owners, it was covered. For others like Dillon Kennedy who said, “No it won’t {coverage} mine broke too and I had to buy another one and it was 135 dollars and another 100 for the service department to swap it out.”

I guess if you want it to be covered, you will need to haggle with the service department for a bit and really explain to them that you don’t slide and that this broke out of “perpetual accessibility.” Dealers hate it when you use big words so try to use as many as possible.

What do you think? Has this happened on your 2022 Toyota Tundra? Let us know in the comments below.

Harutiun Hareyan is reporting Toyota news at Torque News. His automotive interests and vast experience test-riding new cars give his stories a sense of authenticity and unique insights. Follow Harutiun on Twitter at @HareyanHarutiun for daily Toyota news.