If you are the owner, or the soon-to-be owner, of a Toyota Land Cruiser 120 (or another Toyota vehicle with the 1KD engine) you will no doubt have seen all the horror stories regarding the injectors used on this engine. Injectors get neglected, the user doesn’t hear (or care) that the engine sounds like a bag of spanners, moves the car on without doing the work for the next owner to deal with it. Can you tell I’m talking from experience? However, as costly a job this is, it’s completely possible to do it by the amateur mechanic. If I can do it, and it can be absolutely fine for the last 2 years, then you can as well.
- About The Diesel Injectors Toyota Use On The Land Cruiser 120
- Video About How I Change The Injectors On My Toyota Land Cruiser
- Things To Remember/What I Learned
- Toyota TechStream
- Torque Specs Are Everything!
- Use Toyota Parts, But Maybe Not From Toyota
- Do Not Use Copper Injector Seats
- Changing Injectors ARE A Service Item
- Conclusion
About The Diesel Injectors Toyota Use On The Land Cruiser 120
The Land Cruiser 120 uses a common rail diesel engine which uses high pressure injectors so that it can make the right noises and move the vehicle along. In it’s early days it was found that the copper injector seats Toyota used weren’t up to the job so would lead to leaky injectors (amongst other issues). The fix for this was an alloy injector seat which Toyota now supply. This is key to remember as if you purchase refurbished injectors for your Toyota Land Cruiser then there is a chance they will come with the copper seats which are to be avoided.
I mentioned refurbished injectors, and from what I saw across the internet there were a group of people who react to using refurbished injectorls like they would if their neighbour broke in to their house on Christmas Eve and defacted on their kid’s presents. “You must only buy new!”. Fair enough pal, calm down before you have a stroke. When I was getting the parts together I called my local Toyota dealership in the UK and enquired about buying new injectors. Not only were they £330 per injector, the chap in the parts department said they would only be refurbished. They don’t provide them new. While it’s nice to have new things, it’s also better to use recommended specialists where they have made a name for themselves on refurbishing these parts.
Video About How I Change The Injectors On My Toyota Land Cruiser
This is a video of my own experience in changing the injectors on my Toyota Land Cruiser 120. I’m no where near an expert, just a useful idiot with tools. I’ve demonstrated here the care needed to do the job successfully as well as the inevitable issues you can run in to, such as breaking bolts in the head/block of the engine. It took a long time, as I’m a slow worker anyway and filming makes things longer, but there were moments when things broke that I wasn’t prepared for which caused delays.
Things To Remember/What I Learned
I learnt a lot from changing the injectors, especially in regards to my own mental health as I experienced a panic attack while tightening the bolts on to the engine after breaking the bolt. That wasn’t fun. But there are a number of things I learned from this job.
Toyota TechStream
You are doing nothing here without this piece of software! There are several sellers on eBay who sell the software along with the OBD2 to USB connector needed for the laptop/computer you’ll run it on. With my professional IT hat on – do not run this software on a piece of equipment that has access to the internet. The software is quite clearly questionable in it’s authenticity, and when installed any anti-virus software worth it’s salt removes it because it’s dodgy. This is a problem of course if you’re using your family laptop that you do your banking on. It’s best for this software to be run on a cheap “throwaway” laptop that will only be used to run this software and never connected to a local network or the internet.
That said, while you require TechStream to code the compensation values of the new injectors (and to retrieve the old ones, just incase), it provides you with the running parameters of the vehicle while it’s running. This is used to diagnose faulty injectors. In my experience the running values TechStream provided gave the impression the injectors were fine. It wasn’t until I removed the injectors and inspected them (along with the condition of the oil in the head) it was clear that the injectors weren’t fine. I feel I changed these “early” in their failure process, or at least a lot sooner than what TechStream would have you believe.
Torque Specs Are Everything!
We are dealing with the engine here so everything must be done to spec. With that in mind it’s imperative that you acquire the workshop manual from Toyota regarding the torque specs of the injector screws etc used on the engine.
What you do not want to do is use the injector change guide provided by Baileys Diesel Group. The torque settings quoted in that guide are way above what Toyota have spec’ed out in their own workshop manuals. You do not want to overtighten these screws, and it’s common knowledge to those who work on these engines that the Baileys document isn’t worth the bits and bytes it uses on your computer. Avoid.
Use Toyota Parts, But Maybe Not From Toyota
This is something I only found out while struggling with another problem on this Toyota Land Cruiser. Other than the injectors, every other part and consumable I used on my Toyota Land Cruiser Prado was bought from my local Toyota dealership. This meant not re-using the injector fuel lines and paying £130 per line from Toyota.
There is another website called Amayama who provide genuine Toyota parts but for less than what you may find from your local Toyota dealership. It’s a useful website to use especially as you can use it for comparing prices, as not all of what Amayama provide are cheaper than what your local dealership would supply.
However, prices are high due to Toyota’s own greed. That’s a video/article for another time, but for once dealerships aren’t the reason for the high parts prices we encounter with them.
Do Not Use Copper Injector Seats
As said above, copper injector seats are not used on these engines anymore and will cause more problems than what they solve if used. You may get copper seats as part of your refurbished injectors, and if that’s the case swap these out for alloy injector seats from Toyota instead.
Changing Injectors ARE A Service Item
From my own research, it’s considered that these injectors are service items and aren’t for the life of the engine. It’s felt that these injectors should be changed every 7 years or no more 150,000 miles. I think, personally, the miles matter more here. My injectors started to fail at 152,000 miles. If in the event I have this car for a long time, or for another 5 years (so I’ll be up to 7 years since changing these injectors), I’ll be looking at the miles over the age and would probably get these done again before 120,000 miles.
Conclusion
Swapping the injectors on the Toyota Land Cruiser 120 Prado is a messy job, and can be quite nervy if you allow yourself to think how badly it can go wrong if you make a mistake. But as long as one is careful when doing the job then there shouldn’t be an issue. Of course, for ultimate piece of mind, get someone else to do it.
