Toyota Land Cruiser Engine Problems

All engines wear out in time, whether they are running lightly loaded or operating under a heavy load. There is no reason to believe the Landcruiser engine would wear out faster if it weren’t run under load, as the mechanics have suggested.

The Tartarini system is a well-known and respected brand, made in Italy like just about every LPG system is. If you have got a dose of contaminated LPG the system could be gummed up with an oily residue, but you should be able to clean it out. Rather than replace the system I would strongly recommend that you try to fix your problems. Your first stop should be to the installer, if that doesn’t produce a satisfactory solution then go to the system provider and seek their assistance. In your case it’s Global Autogas Supplies (1800 620 945).

It’s hard to say. If the piston was holed or melted because of an issue with the mixture and the piston failure caused the engine to seize it could possibly be blamed on the LPG, but it’s unlikely that the LPG caused the problem.

Lots of six-cylinder LandCruisers have been fitted with the traditional air valve type of LPG system and it works pretty well. The downside to it is that you lose a fair amount of performance by using an air valve system, simply because it’s hard to precisely tune it to the engine, and you really feel the loss of performance on a big, heavy car like the ’Cruiser. The better choice today is a vapour-injection system, which can be precisely tuned to the engine so that it will perform as well on gas as it would on petrol.

I DON'T think you have much chance of getting a result. The vehicle is 17 years old, it's done 180,000km and you have done the servicing yourself. That looks like three strikes and you're out.

You could, with confidence, but it needs to be done by someone who knows what they're doing. The V8 has adjustable tappets that require setting every 40,000km as part of the service schedule, whether it's running on petrol or LPG, and it is important to keep up that maintenance. If you don't, you can get accelerated valve wear. It's also important to make sure the LPG system doesn't run lean. If it does it will run hotter and that will also increase the chances of premature valve wear, which can be even greater if the valve clearances aren't maintained. The Australian LPG Warehouse sells a vapour-injection system for the V8 LandCruiser. They spend a lot of time making sure the combustion temperature is not too high so valve wear doesn't become a problem. It's reckoned you should halve your fuel bill if you convert.

CARMAKERS tune their cars to suit the average motorist and they also leave a safety margin with their tuning so they can be confident they won't have problems once their cars go into production. Tuners can tune more precisely to achieve a desired outcome, be it more power, torque or fuel economy, and they can play within the manufacturer's safety margin. By some fine-tuning they can extract more power and torque than a manufacturer would dare do. That means you're running closer to the edge when you install a chip, but that doesn't mean you will have a problem. Your best course of action is to choose a chip maker with a long-established, good reputation for doing reliable work, and perhaps with some sort of warranty. Then ask to speak to other owners who have had the same chip fitted to their cars.

AS you suggest, it was a fix sometimes used to overcome loss of oil. It would have been useful to stop the oil problem even after the idler shaft had been fixed.

NO THERE won't be any adverse effect on your engine, and with sequential vapour injection you won't notice any difference in performance. You can use an upper cylinder lubricant for a little extra protection as LPG is drier and therefore harsher on valves and valve seats than unleaded petrol, but it's a precaution rather than a necessity. Running the engine on petrol once a week will prevent the seals in the fuel system from drying out and hardening.

EXPERTS at LPG Australia say the conversion is simple and successful, costing $1500-$1800.