Hi, I purchased my Rav4 SX6 in October 2007 brand new. We left the dealer that night and headed home. On the way the car lost power and then kicked back into life at around 60km/hr. At the same time I also noticed a very slight whine from the transmission. That was a Monday night. I thought I would leave it a couple of days to see if the loss of power happened again, and it did a couple of more times. At the same time I did some research on the net to find that Toyota ceased sales of the Rav4 v6 the night we picked ours up due to a fault. I rang the dealer and they told me to bring it in the following Monday and leave it with us and they supplied us a brand new kluger while we waited. At the same time I mentioned the noise in the transmission. A couple of days later I began to ring and ask what's going on with the car. They didn't know. Two weeks later, what's going on? They didn't know. One month later the car was fixed in terms of the loss of power but not the noise. I was given free 2yr extended warranty, free side steps and free first service. I kicked up about the whine and David Lewis the head technical guy from Toyota came out to my work to road test the car with me. By the way I run a mechanical workshop. He told me it was a common noise from the Rav4 V6 transmission and that at 100,000kms the noise wouldn't be any different. The car at that stage had 385kms. At 5000kms I took the car back as the noise wasn't getting any better in fact it was getting worse, and demanded something be done. David Lewis once again took the car for a drive and told me "it's an undesirable characteristic". I have now done 49,924kms and the noise is getting much worse. Obviously I have given up with them and in actual fact, the car has never been back to Toyota. We bought a new Kluger Grande for my wife and she loves it, and I got stuck with the noisy transmission Rav4. I have no answers for you, but all I can say is you aren't alone. All I'm going to do is get rid of the car in the next 6mths. The noise in my trans is from 45km-80km/hr. Good luck.
