Thread: The great petrol vs diesel debate

I bought a 2wd lux with the 5le in it recently.
I wanted another ute but 3l 4wd hiluxes are stupid money considering they are all fucked.....they were all fucked when I sold mine maybe 6 years ago? and now they all have less kms
It is a really hard second hand market to buy in......I was so close to ticking up a new base model 2wd hilux.....Im shit scared of buying HP common rail with more than 100,000km on it and the money everyone is asking for low k ones(not just toyota) it makes no sense why wouldnt you buy new?
I cant afford new at the mo but most likely my next vehicle will be or very low k still under warrenty or something I can afford to dump if it shits itself....so I will be looking at either a new or a shitbox but not in the middle as too much money and too much risk.

Which poses a serious question, new vehicle losses are set to increase as wage earners (people who buy with their own money) become bloody wary of extremely high maintenance costs of relatively low km HPDI Diesels?

Originally Posted by veitnamcam

I bought a 2wd lux with the 5le in it recently.
I wanted another ute but 3l 4wd hiluxes are stupid money considering they are all fucked.....they were all fucked when I sold mine maybe 6 years ago? and now they all have less kms
It is a really hard second hand market to buy in......I was so close to ticking up a new base model 2wd hilux.....Im shit scared of buying HP common rail with more than 100,000km on it and the money everyone is asking for low k ones(not just toyota) it makes no sense why wouldnt you buy new?
I cant afford new at the mo but most likely my next vehicle will be or very low k still under warrenty or something I can afford to dump if it shits itself....so I will be looking at either a new or a shitbox but not in the middle as too much money and too much risk.

Which poses a serious question, new vehicle losses are set to increase as wage earners (people who buy with their own money) become bloody wary of extremely high maintenance costs of relatively low km HPDI Diesels?

I'm currently in a similar dilemma.
Do I try stick with older, more reliable vehicles that are high KMs and need small stuff replacing all the time.
Or do you go for something new, wizz-bang, loads of power and mod-cons, but when things go bad, the costs mount up very quickly.

Electronic everything vehicles are here to stay and whilst they can be annoying, most of the time they are actually hassle free.
A lot of 20 year old European (read Land Rover) 4x4s have a lot of electrics, and whilst they have many people running for their lives, many folk have had great experiences.

I think now days the home mechanic is going to have their own code scanner/reader and it'll be just as important as their set of spanners.
If you read on the Land Rover forums, the guys their can fix anything and more often than not know more about their vehicles than most car mechanics (non specialist).
I'm not saying that Land Rovers are the most amazing, reliable things on the planet.
But folks on forums prove that a vehicle that can cost thousands of dollars to get repaired at the shop, will cost a few hundred in parts and a few hours of research and hours of your time.

I for one would never take my vehicle to a car mechanic, I have the skills to do the work myself and the ability to research a new problem as good as anyone.
Took my car for a warrant a few months back and when I went to pick it up it wouldn't start.
The guy doing the warrant was a bit bewildered as I had just driven it in there and wasn't sure where to start. But as it wasn't even turning over assumed it was a flat battery.
Now I'm not an auto sparky, but I know enough about my car to know that it was not a flat battery and the weird things it was doing was not a typical battery/charging problem, after about 3 mins of thinking I found that one of the main earth leads from the battery had broken, $30 and 10mins later I was on my way home again.

Not really sure where I'm going with this rant.
I think I'm trying to say that whilst you are correct that new vehicles come with a lot of (potential) issues, Hiluxs and Landcruisers from the 1990s aren't becoming anymore common and certainly aren't getting any less KMs on them.
One day you will have to jump ship to the new generation vehicle one way or another, and if you can accept that having a good understanding of the car and a good DIY attitude you can save yourself a lot of money on repairs and/or take preventative measures to stop the problems in the first place.

Originally Posted by Beetroot

I'm currently in a similar dilemma.
Do I try stick with older, more reliable vehicles that are high KMs and need small stuff replacing all the time.
Or do you go for something new, wizz-bang, loads of power and mod-cons, but when things go bad, the costs mount up very quickly.

Electronic everything vehicles are here to stay and whilst they can be annoying, most of the time they are actually hassle free.
A lot of 20 year old European (read Land Rover) 4x4s have a lot of electrics, and whilst they have many people running for their lives, many folk have had great experiences.

I think now days the home mechanic is going to have their own code scanner/reader and it'll be just as important as their set of spanners.
If you read on the Land Rover forums, the guys their can fix anything and more often than not know more about their vehicles than most car mechanics (non specialist).
I'm not saying that Land Rovers are the most amazing, reliable things on the planet.
But folks on forums prove that a vehicle that can cost thousands of dollars to get repaired at the shop, will cost a few hundred in parts and a few hours of research and hours of your time.

I for one would never take my vehicle to a car mechanic, I have the skills to do the work myself and the ability to research a new problem as good as anyone.
Took my car for a warrant a few months back and when I went to pick it up it wouldn't start.
The guy doing the warrant was a bit bewildered as I had just driven it in there and wasn't sure where to start. But as it wasn't even turning over assumed it was a flat battery.
Now I'm not an auto sparky, but I know enough about my car to know that it was not a flat battery and the weird things it was doing was not a typical battery/charging problem, after about 3 mins of thinking I found that one of the main earth leads from the battery had broken, $30 and 10mins later I was on my way home again.

Not really sure where I'm going with this rant.
I think I'm trying to say that whilst you are correct that new vehicles come with a lot of (potential) issues, Hiluxs and Landcruisers from the 1990s aren't becoming anymore common and certainly aren't getting any less KMs on them.
One day you will have to jump ship to the new generation vehicle one way or another, and if you can accept that having a good understanding of the car and a good DIY attitude you can save yourself a lot of money on repairs and/or take preventative measures to stop the problems in the first place.

Yea but common rail injectors are bloody expensive and you cant fix them with a laptop....so some people dont fix them and they eat the engine.

Originally Posted by veitnamcam

Yea but common rail injectors are bloody expensive and you cant fix them with a laptop....so some people dont fix them and they eat the engine.

Very true, but you can (and should) install another finer in line fuel filter and reduce the risk of them being buggered in the first place.
Also you can get injectors rebuilt/serviced which is a lot cheaper than buying new ones.

What you can do with your laptop is monitor the system and check for faults and if you are seeing signs that the injector/fuel pump isn't working as well as it used too, you can investigate the problem before you need a new engine.