Toyota Reviews

The short answer is yes, these are very good vehicles. Obviously, a commercial vehicle like a HiLux may have been worked into the ground by a previous owner, but if the body and chassis are good, then you have a lot less to be concerned about. And that 4.0 V6 engine is an incredible piece of gear, able to clock up, in some cases, half a million kilometres without major work. Perhaps more.

In the case of the HiLux 4X4, the trick is to find one that hasn’t been beaten to death on bush tracks and blazing deserts. But a well-maintained HiLux, especially with this engine fitted (which runs on petrol and has none of the hassles of modern diesels) is a great long-term prospect.

Failed axle seals in Toyotas of this vintage are not unknown, but I’m not sure that they’re any more common than in any other make or model. And you’re right, replacing the seals in this model requires an awfully big hydraulic press and some pretty specific tolerances to be observed.

But the bigger question is why the seals keep failing and, more specifically, why two seals would fail simultaneously. Often, an axle seal will fail because of wear or play in the wheel bearing it helps protect. But to have two to fail together (one being a new-ish one) suggests a problem with the rear axle’s breather system. This is designed to allow pressure to escape as the axle unit heats up and internal pressures rise. If the breather isn’t allowing this to happen, the pressure can increase to the point where it will cause the seals to fail. So that’s where I’d start looking. A blocked breather fitting or crimped breather tube could easily be the cause.

A fault for the pre-crash safety systems on your car is more likely to be centred around the sensors that determine your distance from the car in front, speed, brake application, and forces acting on the car at that moment. Perhaps a faulty fuel sensor could be part of that problem, but possibly not the root cause. It’s hard to imagine that a fuel sensor could be telling the car it’s about to crash. You really need to find out the number of the fault code that’s being thrown and work it out from there.

These safety systems can usually be reset at a dealership or switched-on independent workshop. The cost will vary, but it’s important to have these systems working properly to ensure the car can be legally used on the road and that your insurance company won’t desert you should the unthinkable happen while a major safety system is on the blink.

Meanwhile, the timing belt on the turbo-diesel engine fitted to this series of Prado does, indeed, require replacement at 150,000km or every five years, whichever comes first. So, even if you haven’t covered that distance yet, the five years are definitely up and you should change the belt to avoid it failing and destroying the engine in the process.

If however, the engine in your Prado is the much less common 4.0-litre V6 petrol, then it doesn’t have a timing belt at all. Instead, this engine uses a timing chain which should be good for the life of the vehicle.