I know this is going to be a contentious thread, because I'm about to speak some truth about a shop owned by a beloved and prolific member of the forum, but it is what it is. I'm going to commit up front to not getting into a flamewar. That isn't why I'm here. I need some solid advice on how to push forward with my rig (which is currently dead with no compression in the front-cylinder), and I'm going to lay out my situation and name names because honestly it feels like a sick joke to worry about protecting people's feelings at this point (unlike several other posts I made, trying to walk the tightrope of diagnosing my rig in one hand while safeguarding Steve's reputation in my other.)
Anyway, to make a very long story shorter, a few years ago, I went to Land Cruisers Direct, to swap out the 2lte in my lj78 with something that wouldn't overheat and explode. We'd been running with a replaced/improved head, wide-open exhaust, and keeping a close eye on the egt-meter. Wife and I had a very fun overland tour of the US with a rooftent, and fell deeply in love with the truck, but it was dangerously slow on eg.. two lane highways in the high-desert of Wyoming. We told LandCruisers Direct we wanted more power, but we wanted to stay toyota/diesel. We eventually settled on a 13-bt swap.
The initial swap cost over 17 thousand dollars and took over a year, and the truck came out not running right. The main problem was that it idled very rough in the 800-1000 rpm range. The problem was apparent to us on the initial drive home, but we were anxious to have our truck back so we drove it home and did some research in here to see if we could figure the problem out ourselves. Trying the normal 70-series fixes for air-in-the-fuel-line related problems didn't help, so we took it to an LC specialist nearby (Mike Daja), and eventually gave up and drove the truck 700 miles back to LandCruisers Direct. I say "main" problem because there were many others. For example, the crank-pully and main drive pully were warped, the harmonic stabilizer wobbled visibly when running and there is what looks like welding-slag in the belt-slot of the main drive pully. The AC belt was rubbing against the drive belt when we first got the truck back, coating the inside of the engine bay with burnt belt-rubber. The Spal electrical fan, necessitated by the swap, kept blowing fuses and shorting relays, probably because the heat-sender had been over-tweaked into the side of the engine block, cracking its enclosure. Also the mechanical voltage regulator wouldn't charge the battery reliably. I replaced it with an electronic version, and fixed many other problems with the help of various mud threads and advice, but I was never able to get it idling correctly. There were times the problem wasn't as bad, but it was never **Right**.
LandCruisers Direct kept the truck for 3+ months and drove it back to Texas for us, but within a week it was idling rough again. Total time in shop 1 year 4 months. I'll also mention that every other mechanic who pops the hood of this truck physically winces at the sight of the swap. Huge, taped-off bundles of the original lj78 wiring harness that didn't meet up to the 13bt hang loosely in the engine bay. Too-long vacuum hoses looping around, resting against hot engine block, sometimes not connecting to anything. To say nothing of seal replacements, the engine hadn't even been cleaned up, scrubbed down, or de-greased when it had been on the pallet. The ~2" hoses connecting the air-intake components are obviously original to the previous truck, and cracking with age. One-off unprotected 18-gauge wires run here and there, connecting to sensors and relays like the electric radiator fan relay, temp-senders and the A/C compressor.
I'd read several threads about the benefits of the Italian Tune-up, with respect to direct-injected diesel engines like the 13bt, so despite our discomfort around the idle problem, we tried to take a short road-trip with the truck, heat-saturating it, but keeping the egt's below 950 as always. We had less than 4k miles on the swap when we started. The engine blew less than 1k miles later. Completely losing compression in the forward-most cylinder. We towed it to a uhaul, threw it on a carrier and limped it back home. In hindsight I believe the 13bt was installed with an intermittent compression problem (LCD claimed to have performed a compression test initially).
I'll also mention, communicating with LandCruisers Direct during the swap was a further exercise in frustration. Like I said we were 700 miles away, so not being able to visit, I emailed regularly, and phoned when that didn't work, but trying not to make a nuisance of myself. Steve seemed invariably to be somewhere else (utah, california, wyoming, narnia, etc...), at a show, preparing for a show, working on something else, somewhere else. I'm pretty sure the actual work of the swap was performed by the other mechanic in the shop for whom we had no phone number or email address.
This meant we never really had any pictures or first-hand updates during the swap, but rather an irregular series of second-hand descriptions of work being performed, or problems being worked around, and always the estimate was that they were a few weeks, or a month at most away from completion. In the entire year the truck initially spent in the shop we got a single cell-phone photo of a 13-bt engine sitting in our truck, attached to an email suddenly announcing that the truck was ready for pickup.
I know reading those paragraphs is going to inspire some of you to recommend legal-related courses of action, and I feel you trust me, but again, I'm not really interested in arguing or lawsuits. It's been so long and I really just want my truck back. To that end I'm trying to plan and save up for yet another swap, and trying to figure out what comes next. Given my experience thus far, I'm thinking about going to a gasoline engine with highway power and readily available parts in the US, probably a single-turbo 2jz. I know many of you have had swaps performed, and many of you run shops that perform swaps. I'd like to do a little pricing diligence and discuss some options with a few different shops this time around, and I'd also like to hear some technical opinions about the 2jz/lj78 combo, which is evidently a bolt-in option. I've read the available threads on the combo, which are sparse. I'm not really worried about killing myself or destroying trail with the overabundance of power -- I'm not that kind of a driver. The truck will be used for long-distance highway hauls between Montana and Texas multiple times per year in all kinds of weather, with a good deal of non-recreational off-roading in both of those locations.
So mud..
-pradoblivious
Anyway, to make a very long story shorter, a few years ago, I went to Land Cruisers Direct, to swap out the 2lte in my lj78 with something that wouldn't overheat and explode. We'd been running with a replaced/improved head, wide-open exhaust, and keeping a close eye on the egt-meter. Wife and I had a very fun overland tour of the US with a rooftent, and fell deeply in love with the truck, but it was dangerously slow on eg.. two lane highways in the high-desert of Wyoming. We told LandCruisers Direct we wanted more power, but we wanted to stay toyota/diesel. We eventually settled on a 13-bt swap.
The initial swap cost over 17 thousand dollars and took over a year, and the truck came out not running right. The main problem was that it idled very rough in the 800-1000 rpm range. The problem was apparent to us on the initial drive home, but we were anxious to have our truck back so we drove it home and did some research in here to see if we could figure the problem out ourselves. Trying the normal 70-series fixes for air-in-the-fuel-line related problems didn't help, so we took it to an LC specialist nearby (Mike Daja), and eventually gave up and drove the truck 700 miles back to LandCruisers Direct. I say "main" problem because there were many others. For example, the crank-pully and main drive pully were warped, the harmonic stabilizer wobbled visibly when running and there is what looks like welding-slag in the belt-slot of the main drive pully. The AC belt was rubbing against the drive belt when we first got the truck back, coating the inside of the engine bay with burnt belt-rubber. The Spal electrical fan, necessitated by the swap, kept blowing fuses and shorting relays, probably because the heat-sender had been over-tweaked into the side of the engine block, cracking its enclosure. Also the mechanical voltage regulator wouldn't charge the battery reliably. I replaced it with an electronic version, and fixed many other problems with the help of various mud threads and advice, but I was never able to get it idling correctly. There were times the problem wasn't as bad, but it was never **Right**.
LandCruisers Direct kept the truck for 3+ months and drove it back to Texas for us, but within a week it was idling rough again. Total time in shop 1 year 4 months. I'll also mention that every other mechanic who pops the hood of this truck physically winces at the sight of the swap. Huge, taped-off bundles of the original lj78 wiring harness that didn't meet up to the 13bt hang loosely in the engine bay. Too-long vacuum hoses looping around, resting against hot engine block, sometimes not connecting to anything. To say nothing of seal replacements, the engine hadn't even been cleaned up, scrubbed down, or de-greased when it had been on the pallet. The ~2" hoses connecting the air-intake components are obviously original to the previous truck, and cracking with age. One-off unprotected 18-gauge wires run here and there, connecting to sensors and relays like the electric radiator fan relay, temp-senders and the A/C compressor.
I'd read several threads about the benefits of the Italian Tune-up, with respect to direct-injected diesel engines like the 13bt, so despite our discomfort around the idle problem, we tried to take a short road-trip with the truck, heat-saturating it, but keeping the egt's below 950 as always. We had less than 4k miles on the swap when we started. The engine blew less than 1k miles later. Completely losing compression in the forward-most cylinder. We towed it to a uhaul, threw it on a carrier and limped it back home. In hindsight I believe the 13bt was installed with an intermittent compression problem (LCD claimed to have performed a compression test initially).
I'll also mention, communicating with LandCruisers Direct during the swap was a further exercise in frustration. Like I said we were 700 miles away, so not being able to visit, I emailed regularly, and phoned when that didn't work, but trying not to make a nuisance of myself. Steve seemed invariably to be somewhere else (utah, california, wyoming, narnia, etc...), at a show, preparing for a show, working on something else, somewhere else. I'm pretty sure the actual work of the swap was performed by the other mechanic in the shop for whom we had no phone number or email address.
This meant we never really had any pictures or first-hand updates during the swap, but rather an irregular series of second-hand descriptions of work being performed, or problems being worked around, and always the estimate was that they were a few weeks, or a month at most away from completion. In the entire year the truck initially spent in the shop we got a single cell-phone photo of a 13-bt engine sitting in our truck, attached to an email suddenly announcing that the truck was ready for pickup.
I know reading those paragraphs is going to inspire some of you to recommend legal-related courses of action, and I feel you trust me, but again, I'm not really interested in arguing or lawsuits. It's been so long and I really just want my truck back. To that end I'm trying to plan and save up for yet another swap, and trying to figure out what comes next. Given my experience thus far, I'm thinking about going to a gasoline engine with highway power and readily available parts in the US, probably a single-turbo 2jz. I know many of you have had swaps performed, and many of you run shops that perform swaps. I'd like to do a little pricing diligence and discuss some options with a few different shops this time around, and I'd also like to hear some technical opinions about the 2jz/lj78 combo, which is evidently a bolt-in option. I've read the available threads on the combo, which are sparse. I'm not really worried about killing myself or destroying trail with the overabundance of power -- I'm not that kind of a driver. The truck will be used for long-distance highway hauls between Montana and Texas multiple times per year in all kinds of weather, with a good deal of non-recreational off-roading in both of those locations.
So mud..
- Who should I be talking to?
- Is there a better toyota gas engine option to balance performance and reliability in an lj78? (also interested to hear some real world 2jz gas-mileage experience)
-pradoblivious