Dear Hilux fans,

I am writing from Argentina seeking some information about your experiences with the 2.5 and 3.0 D4D engines. I am buying a new Hilux with the 2.5 engine in a few weeks time. This engine in Argentina is offered with only 102 HP. I believe this same engine was available in the UK prior to the current one that has about 120 HP.

In Argentina we have a problem with diesel fuel, in that it contains a very high amount of sulphur, about 1500 ppm, and by what I have been told does not conform to any international quality standard. Recently premium diesel has become available which has only 50 ppm of sulphur, one brand being from Repsol that conforms to Euro 4 standard. There have been many reports of people experiencing injector problems, many of which have had to be replaced, often under guarantee.

Most people blame the problem on the low quality diesel, mainly on the high sulphur content. I have spoken to several Toyota dealers; some say to use the standard diesel as the engine has a good filter to cope, and won’t have a problem. Others recommend you use the premium diesel. To give you an idea of the costs involved, standard diesel costs about 40p/ltr. Premium about 55p/ltr. If you are doing about 30.000 kms. a year there is a sizable difference.

My question is therefore; have any of you had problems with injectors, and for what cause? I have read about problems in Spain. If something similar is happening here, with good quality diesel, then maybe it’s not down to the diesel, but the new common rail technology.

I would be very grateful for your comments.

Kind regards,

George Simson

PS Doesn’t sound very Argentine my name, does it? That’s because I’m an Anglo-Argentine, and live in the “camp”, in El Hoyo, Chubut province. S42 W71.5

Here is my old wagon

Hi George ,I bought a 3.0 Landcruiser LC4 brand new in 07 and kept it for a year , it was always run on good fuel (all our fuel in Northern Ireland from Supermarkets etc is good quality ISO spec) , it was never driven really hard and yet had injectors replaced twice in the year , first at 8000 miles and then again at 16000 , they just got progressively more noisy knocking really badly when the engine was cold. I sold it with 25000 miles on it and at that time it was fine , they told me the second set of injectors were modified ones and in fairness it did'nt give any trouble after they were fitted. Cheers . Daron

IIRC, the sulphur compounds in diesel acted like a lubricant so it was actually better for the injectors than low-sulphur fuel, which needs some extra additives (And is partly why diesel became more expensive than petrol here apparently; Removing the sulphur made the normally simple refining process a bit trickier, plus the extra additives.).

The main bad things about normal sulphured diesel are all to do with emissions; Aside from the undesirable smell and effect on air quality, it also wrecks diesel catalytic converters similar to the way lead does for petrol catalytic converters, which is why in the US there are (were?) not many diesel cars (Without catcons they'd produce too much NOx and other emissions that their emissions rules would allow. Now that the US is making low-sulphur diesel mandatory, we'll probably be seeing more diesel cars there!).

Thanks for your comments. As you mention, sulphur does act as a lubricant, and people there are concerned that if you use the premium diesel, you may be doing more harm than good, due to less lubrication. It realy is a minifield at the moment.

George