Crossroads - What To Do

[adam1982]

Hi All,

Bit of a Toyota Owners Club newbie here, I've been reading the forums here for a while, but have only just signed up :)

I have a couple of questions that I am hoping you wonderful people may be able to help me with as i'm at a crossroad. I have a 1998 Hilux, 5spd manual 3ltr non turbo diesel dual cab pickup 4X4. It's running 31x10.5x15 tires that are a road tire (not muddies). I'm pretty sure the model number is LN167R. I'll put a couple of pictures of it below so you can see exactly what it is.

It is just about to tick over 270,000Kms sometime next week and it is in very good shape. There is nothing wrong with it, everything still works perfectly. I have owned it for about a year and been out "wheeling" just about every weekend since getting it. I got bogged more then my fair share of times when I first got it - massive learning curve for me as I had never owned or been 4x4'ing before. The majority of times I got stuck was due to open diffs front and rear, i'd loose traction on one wheel front and rear and it was game over.

Now for my questions, I love my hilux, it has heaps of "character" and its a good solid car, but there are a couple of things that are really starting to bug me and have me at a cross road. these couple of things are making me think seriously about trading it in for something else. I'm hoping that someone here may be able to post some suggestions about how to overcome these things so I can keep the Hilux

1. Highway cruising

When travelling to work, or heading away for a holiday or what not. When I get up to 100Kmph the poor thing is rev'ing its guts out. At 100kmph it is reving at 2900/3000RPM in 5th gear. I dont know if the previous owner has changed anything, but surely this isnt normal? Is it supposed to be reving this high? all gears up to 4th seem to drop the rev's quite a bit between gear changes but going into 5th seems to only drop the rev's like 300rpm.

It feels like i need a 6th gear or something? It also limit's me to a speed of about 100kmph because at 110 its reving at about 3300 and the fuel economy just goes out the window. Being limited to 100kmph like that starts to get really tedious when travelling long distances and add's quite a bit of extra time when your talking about travelling up to 6-8 hours worth of driving in a normal car that can travel at 110kms (or 120kms even though its over the speed limit) I also think that if I could drop the rev's a bit for highway driving I would get even more range out of a fuel tank too. It's not to bad at the moment, on a long distance highway run out of a full tank (66L) I get about 550Kms.

2. What can I do to make it faster / get more power?

Now i know that Hilux's were not made or designed to be fast, but at times it seriously feels like I could get out and run faster. I even entertain the idea of installing peddles off a push bike into the drivers side foot-well so I can peddle the thing faster!!

I know that at the end of the day its only a 4cl 3Ltr diesel and NOT turbo but, come on! when travelling on the highway for a holiday overtaking is just NOT an option. at least not unless i'm trying to overtake down hill with a tail wind!

Also when it comes to hills out on the open road you will be sitting on 100kms in 5th then you find yourself going back to 4th, then to 3rd and by the end of it doing 60/80kmph in 3rd or 4th contemplating jumping out and pushing, is it supposed to be this gutless?

After doing some reading and searching on previous threads and forum posts from here, it seems that the main options are:

* Turbo the motor - This is what I was thinking about doing, but from what I can see not a good option on a motor with 270,000kms on it already

* Replace the motor with something bigger or do a v8 transfer - apparently quite an expensive and time consuming option

* Sell the car - the option that is looking more and more likely with everything I read

are there any other options out there that I can look at that are not going to cost a fortune? I dont want a race car, I just want some more power and the ability to overtake.

3. Open diff's

Not really a big deal this one, more of a source of embarrassment. I know a lot of 4x4's out there have open diffs and that the option is to put in diff lockers (Auto lockers, air lockers etc)

This has been one of the biggest causes of me getting "Bogged/stuck" and having to be snatched out by my mate. It's also starting to get really annoying/embarrassing that my mate who has a 2000 model Nissan pathfinder seems to be able to go through just about everything without getting stuck, yet as soon as I loose traction on one front and rear wheel the old Lux just stops dead - this seems to happen quite easily. It's even got to the point of my mate in his pathfinder leaving it in rear wheel drive and deliberately bogging himself (IE on sand, rear wheel drive foot on brake and gas and just buries himself, then putting his pathfinder into 4x4 and driving straight out) just to turn around and say "hey look theres some sand on the ground are you bogged yet" It seems at times the only way I can keep up with him is to go through things at quite a high speed or i'll get stuck.

Is there anything I can do to improve the off road capabilities of the lux? I've got pricing on Auto lockers as ARB air lockers are just well outside of my budget at present. Like I said, this one isn't really a big deal as I know roughly what I need to do. (Lockers bigger/better tires etc) If I can fix the first two points, then i'll spend some money and put in a front auto locker and get the rear diff looked at - i dont know if it is LSD or not, it will sometimes spin both wheels (IE In sand) but when i need it (IE when i get stuck) only one wheel spins - if i had power to both wheels then i wouldn't have got stuck to start with.

Sorry for the really long post, and if you have read this far thanks for taking the time to read through. I'm hoping some of you wonderful people out there may be able to give me some suggestions on how to improve the above as I really want to keep the hilux, but the points 1 and 2 above are really big sticking points for me. I can fix point number 3 with lockers and better tires i think, but unless I can fix numbers 1 and 2 then theres no point spending the money on it.

Thanks heaps and hope to hear from you / get some good replies and suggestions soon

Adam

[adam1982]

This is how far it has got with my mate proving how he can keep driving out of things without "any trouble"

Sinking himself down to the diff, till his rear wheels spin freely in RWD before engaging 4x4 and driving straight out:

[adam1982]

No one out there got any suggestions / Ideas ?

[boozehound]

give it time mate, people will put suggestions up, i promise. I dont have a hilux although i do want one so i cant really comment. But your pic looks great. All i can say about the revving is that because the truck is built for off road it will naturally develop is power in the lower rev ranges. Therefore when you hit 60 70 miles an hour, all the torque and power has practically gone leaving the engine to struggle for a bit. Just like my transit van. This is perfectly normal and providing you stay away from the red line you will be fine.

[adam1982]

Thanks for your reply mate :)

I've posted on a couple of other forums asking the same questions. Whilst I havent got any other replies apart from your's i'll post the feed back from the other ones below incase some time in the future someone else is searching these forums for the same info. Hopefully it'l help someone else one day :)

give it time mate, people will put suggestions up, i promise. I dont have a hilux although i do want one so i cant really comment. But your pic looks great. All i can say about the revving is that because the truck is built for off road it will naturally develop is power in the lower rev ranges. Therefore when you hit 60 70 miles an hour, all the torque and power has practically gone leaving the engine to struggle for a bit. Just like my transit van. This is perfectly normal and providing you stay away from the red line you will be fine.

[adam1982]

Ok the info I got from some other forums on my questions above:

* Not really a lot that can be done about the high rev's thats the way it is with the 98 hilux. Apparantly the newer hilux 2000 model etc but the SR5 version of it had a different gearbox / ratio's

* Could change tire size which would drop the rev's down - but the side affect would be speedo out and then it would suffer even more on hills

* change engine / turbo - both very expensive options. Turbo'ing a older / high KMS engine is not a great idea. changing the engine for something else is expensive, always run into problems and then once it has a different engine it has to meet certain standards and get engineering certificates to get back on the road.

* more suspension travel - doing this may help by keeping the wheels on the ground so that it doesnt loose traction so easy.

At this stage, the solution i'm looking at is to sell the hilux and purchase something else, possible a 2003ish patrol

- Adam

[mudslut]

Ok the info I got from some other forums on my questions above:

* Not really a lot that can be done about the high rev's thats the way it is with the 98 hilux. Apparantly the newer hilux 2000 model etc but the SR5 version of it had a different gearbox / ratio's

* Could change tire size which would drop the rev's down - but the side affect would be speedo out and then it would suffer even more on hills

* change engine / turbo - both very expensive options. Turbo'ing a older / high KMS engine is not a great idea. changing the engine for something else is expensive, always run into problems and then once it has a different engine it has to meet certain standards and get engineering certificates to get back on the road.

* more suspension travel - doing this may help by keeping the wheels on the ground so that it doesnt loose traction so easy.

At this stage, the solution i'm looking at is to sell the hilux and purchase something else, possible a 2003ish patrol

- Adam

mate if you want some good info try the ... hpoc.co.uk...full of very knowledgable people on all models of pick ups and surfs

unfortunately you ve got a n/a engine there and they are slow as <I thought I could get past the swearing filter - what a sad muppet I am eh?>

i own a mk4 2.4td and its only marginally better although once it gets going it cruises at 70-80mph no probs on the motorway...ans it needs driving quite hard throgh the gears to get there

if you increase the tyre size itll be even slower

turboing the motor is not so difficult.youll need to find a surf wrecker and take off inlet manfold exhaust manifoldturbo pipes,blank off the egr,

oil feed pipes, water feed pipes, turbo ct20,top section of exhaust and bolt all this lot on your motor ,turn up the pump 1/8th of a turn and plumb in the oil cooling lines and the water cooling pipes

you could also fit a toyota 3lt v6 motor.... should be plenty of them over there...or a toyota ls400 v8 lump fits on to your box

or as you say sell it and buy an SR5 v6 mk5.....or if your flushed go for a mk6 4lt petrol or 3lt d4d deisel invincible 170bhp and chip it to 200bhp