Toyota Land Cruiser Problems

If the engine power has returned since this episode, I’d be willing to suggest that what happened is that the vehicle had gone into limp-home mode. This happens when something like the transmission or engine becomes hot enough that to continue at normal pace might cause damage to the vehicle. It’s the car’s way of saving its own life, if you like. When it does, you can expect a warning light and a reduction in power, just as you experienced.

Towing a caravan up hills is a great way to get a transmission really hot, or even a turbocharged engine such as the one in your LandCruiser. If the vehicle returned to normal once it had cooled down, then you shouldn’t have any ongoing problems, but another oil change and perhaps transmission service might be a good idea as these fluids can lose their mojo once they’ve been really hot even once.

The Toyota LandCruiser is one of those vehicles that defies conventional wisdom by being super long-lived. It kind of depends on which model LandCruiser you’re talking about, but if it’s a diesel-engined version, there’s every chance that it still has lots of life left in it at 320,000km.

That presumes, of course, that it has been serviced correctly and has not been used to drag an excavator on a trailer at 110km/h every day of its life. Any vehicle with this many kilometres needs a very careful pre-purchase inspection but, being a LandCruiser, the cost of this inspection is warranted where it may not be on many other makes and models.

Torque converters have been known to seize and, if that’s the case, it could stall the engine because there’s no slip to allow the engine to idle while the car is stationary. You need to have this checked by a transmission specialist who may have seen this very thing before. Either way, the vehicle won’t be going anywhere under its own power.

Even if the gearbox itself had frozen solid, the torque converter should still allow enough slip to let the engine idle. So that’s definitely where to start the investigation.

This is actually more common than you think and affects lots of different makes and models. Service station fuel pumps are designed to shut off once the tank is full (to avoid over-filling by the customer). They do that by detecting any splash-back up, or pressure build-up in, the throat of the fuel filler. In most cases, this splash-back or pressure wave is caused by the fuel level being so full, the fuel being pumped in has nowhere else to go. And so the fuel pump shuts off.

But for some reason, some cars are just harder to fill with some pumps than others. Whether it’s the path the filler neck takes to the tank to even the pressure produced by the fuel pump, it’s just one of those things, apparently.

The best way to get around it (and avoid having the fuel pump click off annoyingly 20 times every fill-up) is to be a bit tactical with the pump nozzle. Instead of pushing it all the way into the filler neck, withdraw it slightly. The other technique is to twist the fuel nozzle, say, 90 degrees so that it sprays directly on to a different part of the filler neck. The other thing you can try is to not pull the trigger on the fuel pump all the way. By modulating the trigger slightly, you might find that the fuel now enters the filler neck at a rate more agreeable to the pump.

On this series of LandCruiser, the fuse box you need to access is behind a plastic panel just to the side of the steering column, low down on the lower edge of the dashboard. Once you’ve removed the cover, there should be a legend printed on the inside of it that tells you which fuse is which. The fuse you need to check is fuse number 2 which controls all those circuits as well as the number-plate light, the glovebox light and the car’s clock. The replacement fuse you need is a 15Amp of the blade type.

If the fuse continues to blow, then you need to start looking for a short-circuit or other wiring problem that is forcing the fuse to blow to protect the vehicle’s wiring.

Coolant leaks can be very tricky things, often starting at one point and then running down a hose, bracket or wire to drop on the ground where you’re not looking for them. If you definitely can’t find a leak, however, you need to start looking for another problem which could even be a leaking head gasket which is allowing the coolant to enter the engine’s cylinders.

The first thing I’d do, however, is change the radiator hoses., If they’re flattening out when the engine is running, that suggests they’ve collapsed internally and are unable to cope with the suction created by the engine’s water pump (which circulates the coolant around the engine). Even if the hoses look fine, they can be damaged inside and, left this way, can cause a blockage in the cooling system which can lead to the engine overheating. Perhaps this is already happening, and allowing the boiling coolant to escape the system via the pressurised radiator cap or the overflow system.

I'd start with my local Toyota dealer. Chances are it will have a copy of the relevant DVD in its archives, just as it would have copies of technical manuals for vehicles going way back into Toyota's past. Whether or not you'll be able to make yourself a copy of the DVD is another matter, but it can't hurt to ask.

Failing that, check out your local Toyota or four-wheel-drive club whose members might have the DVD and will be happy for you to copy it. Whether that's a copyright breach, though, might be worth looking into.

If none of those options are available, I've seen the DVD in question advertised online. It isn't cheap, though, at $200 or $300. Perhaps there are websites out there that can download a copy of the files which you can burn to a DVD for a fee.

I'll assume you mean the forthcoming Kia EV9 electric SUV. In which case, yes, you will struggle to fit it into a garage that only just contains a 200-Series LandCruiser, as the EV9 is, indeed, 75mm wider. Perhaps. See, at this stage, the images and specifications we've been dished up have involved the vehicle in its concept stage, and as car companies know only too well, not every aspect of a concept makes it to production (which would be sometime next year in the EV9's case).

Whether or not the electric off-roader from Kia will have a mirror-retractor function is anybody's guess right now, but the images we've seen of the concept suggest that instead of conventional mirrors, the EV9 would use small cameras mounted in the mirrors' place, transferring the image to the info-screen inside the car. If that's the case, these tiny cameras would not need to be retractable, suggesting that the width of 2055mm quoted for the Kia is possibly a concept-only dimension.

If the vehicle really reaches production as wide as that, it would have difficulty fitting down some Australian bush tracks; tracks that have been cut by generations of LandCruisers and Nissan Patrols. Then again, the EV9 has been designed for a global market, not just us. And let's not forget the width of a Hummer...

The bottom line is you'll have to wait and see precisely how wide the Kia is when it finally goes on sale. but if your current LandCruiser is a tight fit, don't expect the Kia to be any easier to fit in your garage.

The cruise control issue could be a fault with the body computer whose job it is to talk to the computer that controls the car’s engine and transmission and turn the driver’s instructions into actions. If there was a problem with the physical actuation of the cruise-control, it would potentially not work at all. But a problem that resets when you turn the ignition off and on again is always cause to suspect a computer glitch.

The transmission issue is one that has been ongoing sine the 200 Series was launched. Top gear (sixth) is so tall for fuel-economy purposes that the vehicle in its original form would not select that gear below about 110km/h. That’s fine for the USA and Middle East where cruising speeds are higher, but in Australia, it meant that some owners were never seeing sixth gear.

The solution was to tale the vehicle back to Toyota for a reflash of the on-board computer which would then instruct the transmission to select top gear at 95 or 100km/h. If this reflash hasn’t been performed, you might find that the vehicle has never actually selected top gear in its life. Definitely look into this possibility before spending money on transmission services or anything mechanical.