What should I do about my leaking exhaust? (1 Viewer)

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DivByZero

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Dec 24, 2019
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Location
Sydney, Australia
I've owned my 1HZ diesel 80 series for around 4 years now, and I take pride in the fact that it's in significantly better condition overall now than when I got it. One exception to that is the exhaust, which is pretty much rooted end to end. It's leaking from every gasket, and it's got plenty of rust and more than a few holes and tears, just a bit of which you can see below:
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I'm not afraid to shell out some money to replace parts that are showing their age before they break, and I like to buy genuine parts. In this case though, I'm of two minds. Maybe it's from a place of ignorance, but I just don't see the exhaust as being very important. It's just a glorified pipe taking fumes from A to B, so should I bother doing anything? I'm not worried about looks. Although it's my DD, this car does a fair bit of offroading when I can, and I consider some mud up the side and some dings here and there to be a badge of honour, so I haven't been too worried about the soot these leaks are spraying onto bits of the undercarriage. I did a lot of work plugging up holes and fixing some bits of rust a year or so back, and I don't seem to be getting fumes into the cabin, so maybe I just ignore it?

At the same time, I do want to keep this car for another 10+ years, and since it's going to continue to deteriorate, I figure I'll probably need to give it some attention at some point. I could get secondhand bits from a wreck, but they'll be the same age or older, and will I just be looking at the same issues two years from now? The price would probably be good though. I can get a full new genuine exhaust from the Toyota dealer for around $1400 AUD, which isn't exactly cheap. I normally order all my bits through Partsouq, and Amayama when I have to, but with the size of these bits shipping is the killer, and the dealer actually works out on top, or as close to as to make going online not worth the effort. Again, I think that $1400 is a lot to pay when I don't necessarily rate the exhaust as being that important.

Then there are aftermarket options. I can see a variety of exhaust systems knocked up by random third parties starting at around half the price of a genuine exhaust. Most of these seem to be made for quite a different kind of owner though. I don't care about a "performance exhaust", and frankly something made out of shiny stainless steel would look very out of place indeed, but I suppose if the original exhaust was stainless it would probably still be going strong today. I generally dislike third party options though. I rate Toyota engineers pretty highly, and I know their stuff is made to a certain standard. I could buy a third party system, but it feels like rolling the dice on what could end up to be a fairly dodgy system, being weaker, fitting poorly, or otherwise worse than the original parts in ways I can't necessarily anticipate, that if I'm going to put down that much money, it feels like I may as well go all in and get the new genuine parts.

Then there's the way I use the vehicle. As I said, it does see some offroading. Although I don't go in for insane rock crawling or anything that I feel is seriously risking ruining my rig, it does see some reasonable 4wd tracks from time to time, and I can see marks where the exhaust has taken hits over the years. The leaky exhaust probably helped me last year when I got a bit bogged in a mud hole, and plugged the tailpipe full of dirt when backing up. At least the holes gave the gases somewhere to go! I also worry it might be pointless sinking money into this issue if I'm likely to hit something on a trail and put a tear in the new system a few years from now.

I'm after any and all opinions and recommendations. What would you do with this?
 
My vote is for a stainless pipes for longevity. Perhaps Toyota for muffler? I'm not too familiar with the 1HZ. Do you have a catalytic converters? What are the rules where you live about smog or emissions? Maybe you don't need to worry about that where you are.

What I don't like about the oem system is that it's not stainless. My muffler is huge. I'd also prefer that the pipe was routed over the frame as well.

I'm totally with you on the OEM stuff...but technology has advanced quite a bit in the last few decades in terms of aftermarket suppliers tooling to make something good. Stainless steel exhaust just wouldn't have been cost effective for the factory to incorporate into their already expensive truck.

So if you can get stainless pipes, routed over the frame with a smaller muffler at a reasonable cost I would go for that all day.

You may not care about performance, but I'm certain all those exhaust leaks are not great for your truck....AND if you can get something more streamlined it would be great for the weekend wheeling!
 
My vote is for a stainless pipes for longevity. Perhaps Toyota for muffler? I'm not too familiar with the 1HZ. Do you have a catalytic converters? What are the rules where you live about smog or emissions? Maybe you don't need to worry about that where you are.
Thanks for your advice, I appreciate it. I assume the smaller box in front of the muffler is a catalytic converter (shown in the second picture above), but I haven't found anything official to confirm that. Can't imagine what else it could be though. Part number for that section is 17401-17031. That wasn't a requirement for Diesel engines in Australia at the time though as I understand it (1996), and certainly in terms of emissions regulations I won't have to worry. Even if deleting the converter was a technical violation I'd never get pinged for it. I notice the third party exhaust systems I've seen only have a muffler.

One of the problems I can see I'll have with a third party exhaust is finding one with some reviews I can trust. Since you guys didn't get the 1HZ 80 in the US (pity, it's the best one IMO), there's less people interested in something like this. I'm mostly finding random exhaust fabrication places in Australia selling direct on ebay, or on their websites with again no reviews, and no information about them elsewhere online. Anyone have any brands/names they can drop, or any personal experience with an aftermarket exhaust system I can source down under? If I was in the US with an FZJ80, I'd hit up @OTRAMM (love your youtube videos BTW!) for one of his nice custom exhausts, but I somehow doubt I'll find someone that passionate here making a stainless exhaust for the HZJ80 to such a high standard.
 
No converter on the diesel, that is a flexible joint at the top of the second picture. First thing to consider is yours is diesel, the OE system should last around 25 years! Petrol produces a shed load of vapour so the systems rust from inside out as well from the outside environment so you can ignore comparisons for longevity for OE petrol systems.

If you can afford OE then I would go with that option, it is unlikely you will replace it again during your ownership. Stainless is a good option but has a downside, it will be custom built and herein lies a minefield. You need to find someone who knows their stuff.....and I mean REALLY knows their stuff. It is rare to find someone who has had a system built that did not knock from touching the chassis, leak from poor welds, or box seams, and then the biggy is the sound, one man's way too loud is another man's not loud enough! So stainless for longevity yes, but many other variables to think about and the cost may be close to OE?

I replaced mine last year 25 years and 270,000 plus miles, I purchased a complete aftermarket system but the back box that arrived was the wrong one, once that had been sorted took time) it was an easy fit. Sounds fine and does not rattle. At the Amazon price I paid I could replace it every five years and still be in pocket over an OE unit.

regards

Dave
 
First thing to consider is yours is diesel, the OE system should last around 25 years! Petrol produces a shed load of vapour so the systems rust from inside out as well from the outside environment so you can ignore comparisons for longevity for OE petrol systems.
Thanks, that's something quite important I didn't realize. I know basically nothing about exhausts, and I didn't know that petrol exhaust was more problematic for exhaust systems than diesel. That puts some of what I've read into perspective.

If you can afford OE then I would go with that option, it is unlikely you will replace it again during your ownership. Stainless is a good option but has a downside, it will be custom built and herein lies a minefield. You need to find someone who knows their stuff.....and I mean REALLY knows their stuff. It is rare to find someone who has had a system built that did not knock from touching the chassis, leak from poor welds, or box seams, and then the biggy is the sound, one man's way too loud is another man's not loud enough! So stainless for longevity yes, but many other variables to think about and the cost may be close to OE?
And that is very much my concern. I'm quite cautious about off-spec parts, and frankly after looking for awhile, finding an aftermarket stainless exhaust for the 1HZ that I'd trust to sink that much money into isn't looking promising.

I replaced mine last year 25 years and 270,000 plus miles, I purchased a complete aftermarket system but the back box that arrived was the wrong one, once that had been sorted took time) it was an easy fit. Sounds fine and does not rattle. At the Amazon price I paid I could replace it every five years and still be in pocket over an OE unit.
If I could find an exhaust that looked passable for about a quarter of the price for new genuine, I'd probably give it a go. As it stands though, it does look like I'm looking at paying at least half of the cost of genuine here in Australia for an aftermarket basic exhaust, and up to or over the cost of genuine for stainless. It's just a smaller market here for third party vendors, so there's no economy of scale to reduce the price, and this is a part I can't really source from overseas.

No converter on the diesel, that is a flexible joint at the top of the second picture.
Not the join, the box it runs into at the bottom of the picture. This is actually really bugging me now, as I just spent quite a bit of time looking into it. If it's not a catalytic converter, which it might not be (I've never looked closely at one personally), I'm not sure what it is. There are two distinct boxes on the exhaust. The second one is the muffler, but the first one is a mystery to me. Here's the parts catalog exploded view:
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Mine being Aussie spec (ARL) with the 1HZ, for the front pipe I have the second one down, with the funny box on it. Is this a second muffler? I'm a bit confused. It appears these boxes were only fitted on 1HZ (17401-17031), and 1HDT/1HDFT (17401-17051) engines in Japan, Australia and Malaysia. Partsouq doesn't have a picture of my part unfortunately, but there are some pictures on this random Russian classifieds site: Глушитель (передняя часть) 1HZ Toyota Land Cruiser 80 17401-17031 купить в Уссурийске по цене: 16 950₽ — частное объявление | ФарПост
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The markings on it say "Toyota 36102 Futaba". Anyone know what this thing is doing? Is it a second muffler? Why would there be a second muffler? It does look similar to pictures of some catalytic converters I've seen online, so I'd assumed it was that.
 
Just guessing here due to a lack of familiarity with the diesel versions, but that "second box" might be a resonator. There's one behind the muffler in the gas system. It's a "sort of" muffler.

My take on your original question is to go OEM. It'll be a permanent fix (or as close to that as you can have on an already quarter-century old truck) and will cause no further issues.
 
No cat on the diesels......NONE. The amount of mufflers or silencers or resonators as we know them this side of the world be it one two or three make for a more quiet and tone adjusted system.


regards

Dave
 

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