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Hi
First post here but I have been lurking around and reading through most posts. First some background.
I live in sunny South Africa and I have a 2004 gx with about 240000km on the clock, I am the 3rd owner and have owned the vehicle for about a year now. Overall the vehicle is in great shape and apart from the usual issues (cracks in the dash, droopping rear door) it hasnt skipped a beat. However I have always thought that the 3L turbo motor in this big body was always a little underpowered which has contributed to its fairly heavy fuel consumption which for me averages at about 14.6L per 100km. Now I come from a background of modifing petrol cars mainly vw/audis my last project was a v8 audi that I had supercharged and prior to that a vw golf 5 GTI that was running a fairly large turbo and other goodies so when looking at ways of getting more oomph out of my prado I was quite surprised to find that there isnt too much info regarding engine performance upgrades. I know its a 4x4 and its not designed to be fast but more of low rpm crawler BUT I would still like to be able to get a bit more performace out of it and with that a bit lower fuel consumption.
My journey started.
The first thing I did after purchasing the car was I took it into toyota and had them do full service as well as change the thermostat to the lower temp one I think it was the 76degree thermostat I had fitted. The agents gave the vehicle the green light and there were no issues from them. Drove the car for about a month and noticed the high fuel consumption so next up was a dastek/unichip fitment and my request was for an econmy tune rather than performance (dyno chart attached) 96kw and 353nm were the results. The dyno guys did say that I needed to get my injectors checked. After about 2 months and not seeing any major improvement in the fuel consumption I sent her in to have the injectors renozzled this took about half a day and wasnt too costly out of everything I did I think this lowered my consumption the most but was still fairly high and under hard acceleration especially up hills the car would still have quite a bit of diesel smoke bellowing behind it so it was obviosuly still overfuelling. I have driven the car in that state for a good 3 months now thinking that there wasnt too much else too do but I have been researching and chatting to as many people as I could.
Recently about a month ago I decided to hook up a boost gauge and see what boost I am actually getting out of this turbo and I was quite surprised to see that the max boost I was seeing was .8bar now most diesel cars I have worked on have always had higher boost levels than their petrol counter parts and this being a fairly large displacement diesel motor I would have expected boost of 1bar + under load? So I started focusing on how to get more boost and keep EGTs low, currently even under full acceleration up long hills my temp never goes above half. On some of my older audis I had a local turbo guy build me hybrid turbos with larger compressor wheels and when speaking to him he was a little unsure and said he hadnt dont anything like that to these ct20 turbos..... so the search began and like I said not too much info availible BUT loads of info availible for the supras etc which run a similar turbo I eventually found an upgraded compressor wheel and after chatting to my turbo guy and giving him the spec he gave me the green light so I have ordered the upgraded compressor wheel and I am just waiting for the shipment to arrive. In preperation for more boost I had a look at some aftermarket intercoolers but decided to rather go with WMI kit to keep intake temps low that and I had a kit in my garage from one of my previous projects so this last weekend I decided to get the WMI hooked up. I mounted the pump, pulled off the intercooler so I could fit the nozzle and found that my prado suffers from the carbon/oil build up on the butterfly and intake tract I didnt really have the time to clean it up but I know that running meth through the intake will probably do the job for me anyway. I must say that the WMI setup has changed the car the motor seems to rev quicker and stronger and seems to just want to keep going. I havent run it for long enough yet to give proper feedback on fuel consumption etc but I will take some pics of the setup and add them to this thread.
So now I am just waiting for my shipment to arrive for the compressor wheel, then I will have th turbo rebuilt with the new wheel and after fitment send the prado back to be retuned with the hybrid turbo and WMI and hopefully will have released a little more power from this great car.
First post here but I have been lurking around and reading through most posts. First some background.
I live in sunny South Africa and I have a 2004 gx with about 240000km on the clock, I am the 3rd owner and have owned the vehicle for about a year now. Overall the vehicle is in great shape and apart from the usual issues (cracks in the dash, droopping rear door) it hasnt skipped a beat. However I have always thought that the 3L turbo motor in this big body was always a little underpowered which has contributed to its fairly heavy fuel consumption which for me averages at about 14.6L per 100km. Now I come from a background of modifing petrol cars mainly vw/audis my last project was a v8 audi that I had supercharged and prior to that a vw golf 5 GTI that was running a fairly large turbo and other goodies so when looking at ways of getting more oomph out of my prado I was quite surprised to find that there isnt too much info regarding engine performance upgrades. I know its a 4x4 and its not designed to be fast but more of low rpm crawler BUT I would still like to be able to get a bit more performace out of it and with that a bit lower fuel consumption.
My journey started.
The first thing I did after purchasing the car was I took it into toyota and had them do full service as well as change the thermostat to the lower temp one I think it was the 76degree thermostat I had fitted. The agents gave the vehicle the green light and there were no issues from them. Drove the car for about a month and noticed the high fuel consumption so next up was a dastek/unichip fitment and my request was for an econmy tune rather than performance (dyno chart attached) 96kw and 353nm were the results. The dyno guys did say that I needed to get my injectors checked. After about 2 months and not seeing any major improvement in the fuel consumption I sent her in to have the injectors renozzled this took about half a day and wasnt too costly out of everything I did I think this lowered my consumption the most but was still fairly high and under hard acceleration especially up hills the car would still have quite a bit of diesel smoke bellowing behind it so it was obviosuly still overfuelling. I have driven the car in that state for a good 3 months now thinking that there wasnt too much else too do but I have been researching and chatting to as many people as I could.
Recently about a month ago I decided to hook up a boost gauge and see what boost I am actually getting out of this turbo and I was quite surprised to see that the max boost I was seeing was .8bar now most diesel cars I have worked on have always had higher boost levels than their petrol counter parts and this being a fairly large displacement diesel motor I would have expected boost of 1bar + under load? So I started focusing on how to get more boost and keep EGTs low, currently even under full acceleration up long hills my temp never goes above half. On some of my older audis I had a local turbo guy build me hybrid turbos with larger compressor wheels and when speaking to him he was a little unsure and said he hadnt dont anything like that to these ct20 turbos..... so the search began and like I said not too much info availible BUT loads of info availible for the supras etc which run a similar turbo I eventually found an upgraded compressor wheel and after chatting to my turbo guy and giving him the spec he gave me the green light so I have ordered the upgraded compressor wheel and I am just waiting for the shipment to arrive. In preperation for more boost I had a look at some aftermarket intercoolers but decided to rather go with WMI kit to keep intake temps low that and I had a kit in my garage from one of my previous projects so this last weekend I decided to get the WMI hooked up. I mounted the pump, pulled off the intercooler so I could fit the nozzle and found that my prado suffers from the carbon/oil build up on the butterfly and intake tract I didnt really have the time to clean it up but I know that running meth through the intake will probably do the job for me anyway. I must say that the WMI setup has changed the car the motor seems to rev quicker and stronger and seems to just want to keep going. I havent run it for long enough yet to give proper feedback on fuel consumption etc but I will take some pics of the setup and add them to this thread.
So now I am just waiting for my shipment to arrive for the compressor wheel, then I will have th turbo rebuilt with the new wheel and after fitment send the prado back to be retuned with the hybrid turbo and WMI and hopefully will have released a little more power from this great car.
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