2l-t engine reliable?

[bgw1903]

Hi guys, I am Christoph from Germany. So sorry for my bad English. I am considering to buy a 1998 Toyota hiace 4x4 with a 2.4 turbo diesel (2l-t engine).

The car is maintained good and got 138000km. But I was reading a lot of bad reviews about the overheating on the cylinder head on internet. Specially on English forums.

So is it a engine I should stay away or is it a reliable good engine. I am planning to travel with this engine a lot. So I need a reliable car.

Thanks for every answer!

[RUToyota]

Hi Chris...if the vehicle has been maintained well then I don't see why it shouldn't be reliable...and I think you'd have had signs of HG problems by now.?

 

Good luck.

[Byzii]

A lot of people on the internet are reporting head gasket problems with this engine, but there's equally many people who are reporting no such issues.

It seems like this engine by itself is not bad, as in, it's not like the 2AD engines which had a defect and had problems no matter how well you looked after the car.

In 2L-T engine's case it seems that if the owner is hammering the engine then the head gasket problems quickly arrive, so it means that the engine is not built well enough to withstand abuse. When you think about it, the engine makes max torque at something like 2000-2300 RPM probably so there's really no reason to push it any further. People reporting problems are also the same people constantly pushing that engine to 3k, 4k or even redline.

So in the end it depends on how the previous owners treated it and what's the reason for selling.

[Heidfirst]

20 hours ago, Byzii said:

 it's not like the 2AD engines which had a defect and had problems no matter how well you looked after the car.

That's not true - only a small % (& even fewer after 2009) of 1AD/2AD develop a head/head-gasket issue & I am would strongly suspect that driving cycle (& fuel quality) had some influence on those that did. I, myself, had 2 2AD-FTVs (a 2007 & a 2012) with no engine issues of any kind. 

[Byzii]

1 hour ago, Heidfirst said:

That's not true - only a small % (& even fewer after 2009) of 1AD/2AD develop a head/head-gasket issue & I am would strongly suspect that driving cycle (& fuel quality) had some influence on those that did. I, myself, had 2 2AD-FTVs (a 2007 & a 2012) with no engine issues of any kind. 

I think the primary reason was that the head screws were flawed by design and would stretch over time.

And that "small percentage" thing comes from the Corporate Toyota. Having a friend who worked at Toyota dealership at the time, he said that he would see a car with blown head gasket almost every day for years. We also don't have many of these cars left in our country so it's a bit anecdotal - maybe a really bad batch was sent to our country to have those extreme numbers? But the percentage definitely was nowhere near "small".

[Heidfirst]

6 hours ago, Byzii said:

I think the primary reason was that the head screws were flawed by design and would stretch over time.

Tthere supposedly were a no. of different issues all of which contributed & were separately resolved over production but I have never seen anything pointing at the head screws before.

And that "small percentage" thing comes from the Corporate Toyota.

No, it's not, because Toyota aren't about to release the real nos. into the wild. 

But the percentage definitely was nowhere near "small".

Well, it depends upon your definition of small but imo it's low single figures which to me is small. Yes, that still means thousands, possibly tens of thousands faulty out of the hundreds of thousands of AD engines produced pre-2010. Mind you that would still compare quite favourably with some other manufacturers engines that are known for regularly having expensive failures. & of course Toyota had a free of charge remedial programme even for engines out of their original warranty (but still within certain age/mileage parameters).