diesel rattle in D4D Prado

[mav Addicted PP Member Find all posts View Profile Close mav]

Re: D4D Death rattle

I was told the Diesel specialist had dropped a match in it to see if it contained BIO diesel.

:lol: :lol: :lol: Okay I am not a diesel mech but how does this check for bio-diesel? Does it smell like fish & chips when ignited. :lol: And more importantly is the Toyota mech qualified to make this judgement? If they were going to try and duck shove the problem back to you by saying that you have been using bio-diesel then surely they would need to send the sample out for proper analysis to have a legal leg to stand on.

From my own personal experience with the rattle and what it means, I was told that not all dealerships have the equipment to carry out the testing required by Toyota Corporate. Similarly not all dealerships have the expertise to do the swap out of the injectors.

Toyota Corporate do recognise that there is a problem but I guess they are loathed to announce it publically for obvious bad publicity reasons. However they are having the dealerships treat each case separately and Toyota Corporate have a specific testing routine that must be adhered to and all results are then sent back to Toyota Corporate body. Then TC make the decision based on the results whether or not to authorise the injectors to be replaced. TC does this in a two step exercise, they authorise the dealership to replace the injectors and they have to authorise Denso to supply the injectors to the dealership.

The problem is that Denso have times when there is no stock available of the injectors due to the high demand for them caused by this problem. This is why I am now in my 3rd week of waiting for Denso to supply the dealership in Adelaide who are waiting for them and have been ringing Denso regularly to check when they are going to be sent. As of last Friday Denso still have not been able to send them.

[babs Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close babs]

D4D Death rattle

Mav,

If you think you had a good chuckle about the match in the fuel sample, you should have been in the service centre when he told me!!!!

I dont think any of the 10-15 customers that were in there will ever buy a Toyota again!!!

The problem is obviously there and Toyota are fixing each case as it arrives but surely it does not take 12- 18 months for a lab full of technicians to get some sort of resolution.

At the end of the 3 year warranty, there will be 1000's of these trucks dumped onto the 2nd hand market in Australia as no one in their right mind would want to continue with this saga paying out of their own pocket.

If you want an example of the noise Im refering to, simply find an old holden ( 70's era ) drain all the oil out and start it up for a while. For a $60,000 truck it is quite embarrassing

[mav Addicted PP Member Find all posts View Profile Close mav]

Re: D4D Death rattle

Mav,

If you think you had a good chuckle about the match in the fuel sample, you should have been in the service centre when he told me!!!!

I dont think any of the 10-15 customers that were in there will ever buy a Toyota again!!!

The problem is obviously there and Toyota are fixing each case as it arrives but surely it does not take 12- 18 months for a lab full of technicians to get some sort of resolution.

I know what you mean but I don't think it is just a D4D problem, I am seeing the same kind of reports about injector failures on other CRD engines in Australia. There is no doubt that the D4D is a fine piece of engineering and a damn good engine when it is in good shape but unfortunately it can fail very easily. Not sure if it is fuel related or not to be truthful and neither do the dealerships know for sure what is causing the problem. One thing that I would say is that it makes the D4D not all that good of a choice for those wanting to tour the country in if it is the fuel that is causing it. There are some real dodgy servos in the outback areas.
At the end of the 3 year warranty, there will be 1000's of these trucks dumped onto the 2nd hand market in Australia as no one in their right mind would want to continue with this saga paying out of their own pocket.

This has played on my mind and it may well be the reason why Toyota have not made a mass recognition of the problem. Treating it on an individual basis may make it easier for them to deny fixing this problem out of warranty.

If you want an example of the noise Im refering to, simply find an old holden ( 70's era ) drain all the oil out and start it up for a while. For a $60,000 truck it is quite embarrassing

I am only too painfully aware of what the noise is like, when I drove down the street before my worst injector was swapped out, people two blocks away would run for cover. I was not joking when I said it sounded like a Sherman Tank.

[babs Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close babs]

D4D death rattle

I agree that the D4D is a good engine as up until the 10,000km service, you just couldnt hear it. I picked my dad up from the airport and he thought it was a V6 petrol version.

I am currently booking in for my 30,000km service next week and will be asking to get the injectors checked while I am there, but until Toyota comes up with some thing solid for us ( the consumer ) we will have to continue sucking lemons.


Toyota Oh What a feeling !!! :? :?

[Nick Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Nick]

I am no mechanic but looking through every post on this rattle issue, I could no find anyone with this problem who listed their model as a VX or Grande. IS THIS COINCIDENCE or have owners of these models had the same problem? There are fewer Grandes/VX on the road so maybe just reflects that. I thought the engine was the same for all so can't see why it would only affect GXL or below.

Nick

[MickL Addicted PP Member Find all posts View Profile Close MickL]

Okay I am not a diesel mech but how does this check for bio-diesel?

If you drop a match into diesel (oil based) it will go out (the match that is) .......so I guess Bio diesel would ignite??

Mick

[intens Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close intens]

A couple weeks ago i read an article in the herald sun cars guide and it the the CEO of Mercedes complaining about the diesel quality in Oz saying its only barely better then getting filtered through a tea strainer (his words) so it must be a diesel problem, they also said that they where making a stand (not sure how or what)

[babs Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close babs]

Okay I am not a diesel mech but how does this check for bio-diesel?

[quote:3h5ll76n]If you drop a match into diesel (oil based) it will go out (the match that is) .......so I guess Bio diesel would ignite??

Mick[/quote:3h5ll76n]

Thats what I was also told by the Toyota service centre, my point is that the match method is not a very technical solution to an obviously technical problem. Might as well run it on cheap tequila.

[mav Addicted PP Member Find all posts View Profile Close mav]

I am no mechanic but looking through every post on this rattle issue, I could no find anyone with this problem who listed their model as a VX or Grande. IS THIS COINCIDENCE or have owners of these models had the same problem? There are fewer Grandes/VX on the road so maybe just reflects that. I thought the engine was the same for all so can't see why it would only affect GXL or below.

Nick

Sorry but mines a VX.

[MickL Addicted PP Member Find all posts View Profile Close MickL]

Thats what I was also told by the Toyota service centre, my point is that the match method is not a very technical solution to an obviously technical problem.

I agree it's not very technical, but it may be a good "in field" indicator.
You would still expect further testing by sending a sample to a lab.


Mick

[babs Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close babs]

I could understand the field test if we were in the field or rural to an available lab facility, but Liverpool in the middle of Sydney???????

It just comes back to blaming the customer first and for as long as possible in the hope they will simply just go away and live with it............they have picked the wrong guy for that...

[masso Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close masso]

I purchase diesel based on price and convenience. Sometimes the majors, sometimes independants. For the life of me I cant imagine having to drive around trying to find "good quality"fuel to put in the truck. The damned thing is a 4x4, designed to be used in all sorts of harsh environments... not pussy footing around looking for fuel with 90kilo octaves devoid of bio whatchamecallit and taken from sterilised medical grade servo tanks. Equally, I am not going to continue to start up a 2007 model car in the shed and let it idle for 5 minuted before i use it.... Its not a 1917 model.....I dont have time for that rubbish....Mine is still ratting its *%*$*^off, and after its 40K service... it now seems to be slurping whatever fuel i give it, at an average of 17.5 lhk around town totally unladen after its longterm average of 12.5. Something is wrong and i am now about to hop on the bandwagon with Toyota BIGTIME. The dealer I purchased my car from has no idea, incompetent service personnel, and i am frankly pi_ _ed right off!
Prado aint my favourite truck right now!

[mav Addicted PP Member Find all posts View Profile Close mav]

I purchase diesel based on price and convenience. Sometimes the majors, sometimes independants. For the life of me I cant imagine having to drive around trying to find "good quality"fuel to put in the truck. The damned thing is a 4x4, designed to be used in all sorts of harsh environments... not pussy footing around looking for fuel with 90kilo octaves devoid of bio whatchamecallit and taken from sterilised medical grade servo tanks. Equally, I am not going to continue to start up a 2007 model car in the shed and let it idle for 5 minuted before i use it.... Its not a 1917 model.....I dont have time for that rubbish....Mine is still ratting its *%*$*^off, and after its 40K service... it now seems to be slurping whatever fuel i give it, at an average of 17.5 lhk around town totally unladen after its longterm average of 12.5. Something is wrong and i am now about to hop on the bandwagon with Toyota BIGTIME. The dealer I purchased my car from has no idea, incompetent service personnel, and i am frankly pi_ _ed right off!
Prado aint my favourite truck right now!

You should be quite rightly p'd off too masso.

I forgot to add that the other symptom of the rattle is the progressively worse fuel economy. I am now up to 12l/100km. Now that is significant when I was used to 9.1l/100km's

[mardo Lurker Find all posts View Profile Close mardo]

A work colleague of mine has a 5 series diesel BMW, with the same engine found in the X5. It's spent almost as much time at the BMW dealership fixing fuel pump/injector issues than on the road. Another colleague had his new GXL V8 diesel cruiser stall on him within weeks of ownership with catastrophic fuel pump failure.

I starting to think that the lower quality of diesel fuel in Australia is on the threshold of compatibility with modern common rail diesels, ie. with extremely tight tolerances vehicle manufacturers are aiming for in order to maximize power and efficiency, as to gain some competitive margin, they might be pushing it a little too far. Hence, some vehicles with "looser" tolerance may have no issues, and the ones with "tighter" tolerance may be more susceptible to questionable fuel quality.

Interestingly, I haven't heard of any issues with the V8 diesel found in the new 70 series cruiser. It's been designed to have greater tolerability with respect to fuel quality (understandable as some of the markets it's used in are third world), but it has a lower specific power output, one less turbo doesn't help either!

This doesn't let Toyota off the hook one bit. They need to be responsible and accountable for the engines they manufacture and tune for the respective target markets, so if our fuel is borderline, the D4D engine should have been released with less specific output and greater tolerance for variable fuel available in this country. I would imagine that customers would opt for slightly less power and greater assurance their engine is going to be reliable and durable. I know I would!

Mardo

[intens Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close intens]

Just a thought but im wondering whether the newer ones with the new brocher for the fuel filter, are they newer filters? i tried to see my part number but it was hard to see so maybe someone with a rattler and someone with the newer could post up there numbers?