Hello from Toyota Motor Sales USA. Yesterday, we informed the NHTSA of our intent to conduct a Special Service Campaign for our 2007 FJ Cruiser—approximately 9,000 early production vehicles—to inspect the tires.

We’ve not issued any media releases regarding this small volume service action, but because of the importance of this exciting new vehicle to the Toyota line-up and the incredible passion that has been ignited by FJ owners online in discussion groups like FJCruiserForums, we’re going to try to be a bit more proactive and provide the right information to consumers and customers via consumer-generated internet discussions.

The service campaign is a voluntary action by Toyota to ensure the highest levels of customer satisfaction for FJ owners and to make sure that the vehicle continues to perform as expected by our owners. This is not a tire manufacturer recall, but a special servicing campaign by Toyota.

During the unique tire-to-wheel assembly process for the FJ Cruiser equipped with either the Bridgestone Dueler or Dunlop Grandtrek tires, there is a possibility that the inner bead of the tire may have experienced some damage. If that happened, a bulge could develop at some point on the sidewall and air could leak out. There have been no reported incidents of this actually happening—but we want to take the precaution of finding these tire/wheel assemblies and replacing the tires with new ones.

We are able to isolate the vehicles affected and have VIN lists that will be available to our dealers. Affected FJ Cruiser customers will receive a letter from us starting in early July. The letter will ask FJ Cruiser customers to take their vehicle to a Toyota dealer for inspection, confirmation that they are within the affected tire-to-wheel assembly range and replace all involved tires at no charge to the customer. We think this will take about two hours.

While we certainly would prefer not to have to concern our enthusiastic FJ Cruiser owners, we and our dealers will work very hard to communicate well and make the campaign service as painless as possible. We regret the inconvenience.

Hope this information is helpful.