1985 Toyota Pickup DLX Turbo - 2LT - Restoration Project (1 Viewer)

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Sep 12, 2018
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Santa Cruz, CA
Hi Everyone,
This is my first post, and I'm new to the forum. Been lurking and reading for a long time, but finally decided to post. A little about me, my daily driver is a 1985 Toyota Pickup SR5. I live on a gnarly mountain road, and this billygoat gets me around no matter what the weather, mudslides, tree falls, and all.

It has been a long time dream of mine to have a diesel version. I finally got my hands on one with only about 160,000 miles on it. It needs a bunch of work externally and electrically, but the engine itself is clean, especially on the inside.

One of the first issues that I had with the truck was that it was overheating. I spent countless hours tracking down and tracing down the problem. There were a few issues that were going on:

1. There was an undersized and wrong fan clutch installed. I replaced it with the Aisin FCT-025.

This was a huge improvement, and saw temperatures coming under much better control, but not sufficient to prevent overheating all together. An important and needed upgrade, but not the final cure.

2. I flushed the radiator and coolant system with Irontite. It took a couple of flushes to clean it out, the previous owner probably neglected this, or only ran water, but after three flushes, it started running clean.

This was also an additional improvement, and drastically reduced temperatures, but as with the fan clutch upgrade, it reduced normal engine temperatures, but anytime that I would start to climb a hill I would watch the temperature gauge rapidly rise.

Upon further investigation, we determined that the issue was the injection pump timing. The previous owner had done a timing belt and water pump change, but didn't calibrate the timing. I don't have the SST necessary to dial this in perfectly, so we eyeballed it and made slight adjustments to the orientation of the pump over the course of several days, and suddenly this thing was performing absolutely amazing. Tons more power, no more overheating, and much better gas mileage. I never realized what an effect timing had on engine temperatures, but now I know, and hopefully anyone out there searching for answers in their own projects can use this data that I've gathered. I'm waiting on the SST which I had to source from Japan so I can more accurately dial in the timing and improve the performance.

Questions:

So one of the other issues with the truck is that the Amber turbo light stays on all the time. I just swapped in a new turbo, and it sounds and feels like it is working, but I can't figure out what the problem is.

The Toyota Shop Manual is asking me to check the high and low pressure switches for the turbo, but there is no diagram in the official shop manual, or in the Bentley or Haynes manuals that I have that points out where these switches are? I've looked over the engine many times with the help of some of my friends, and none of us can figure this one out. I've done quite a few searches online trying to find information about these switches, but I can't find anything. The shop manual only refers to them as "high pressure switch" and "low pressure switch."

Anyone on here have any information about where these switches are located, or have part numbers for these?

I'll post some pictures of the truck later tonight or tomorrow. She ain't pretty, yet. Lots of unnecessary chome accents, I personally like it to look as stock as possible, and she could use a fresh coat of paint, but I love her and have waited for her to fall into my lap for a long time. I'm excited to delve into this build and make her truly shine.

Thanks for reading, I appreciate any help, and look forward to sharing more of this story as it develops.

Peace,
Bam
 
Awesome! I just acquired a 1985 (originally 22re) with an L diesel in it. It too looks immaculate inside the block!
 
Just an update. Sorry for the delays, been running in circles trying to get this thing dialed in. So, after chasing down everything I could think of that could have been causing the overheating issues with this engine, I finally managed to narrow it down. It was not a cracked cylinder head, as it known to be a common problem with these engines, instead the piston rings had broken and doubled up on themselves, causing the engine to lose compression in all but one of the cylinders, and subsequently leading to overheating issues. After chasing spending so many hours avoiding a complete tear down and rebuild, in hindsight I wished I had just done that from the start. Got the engine back from the machine shop, and aside from the broken rings, and having to bore out the cylinder by +0.50mm, the engine is fine. Ordered an engine rebuild kit from Australia, and will be putting this thing back together this week. Extremely excited to see how this thing runs when firing on all fours. I always here complaints about this thing being a slug, but for only having compression on one cylinder, this thing still hauled strong and was fun to drive. More updates once I have it back together.

Lesson, if chasing down an overheating problem with your 2LT, check the piston rings, the early 2LT's had less cylinder head issues than the later ones, and a quick check of the pistons can save you a lot of time and headache.
 
will bare that in mind. just picked up an 89 surf with the early side cam 2L-T. mine is actually down with a cracked crankshaft, we think due to bad bearing install by previous owner. whilst the crank is out though we are going to be checking everything else.
 
Hello everyone I have a Toyota Pickup 1985 diesel turbo 2LT but the orange turbo light stays on and the manual says that it is a problem related to the high pressure sensor but I have not found any diagram or where said sensor is located. Bamboo did you find the problem and the solution to it? Does anyone know where the sensor is located? Your answers would be very helpful, thank you
 
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High/Low Boost Pressure Switches are located on the LH side in front of the fuel filter. Check condition of vacuum hoses.

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Thank you very much for the information on the pressure sensors and solved the problem, the problem was that it had no negative, but I have another question to how many RPM should I turn on the indicator in green I await your answers since they help me a lot to repair the hilux 85 with 2lt engine
 
@SlmBa8865, Green light should come on at 1.6 psi. Red light should come on around 9-10 psi. Glad you got it sorted.
Here is a chart you may find useful.

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