How good are hilux surf diesels

[esp22]

Hi, how good are hilux surf diesels offroad...like 1991 model?Also if there are any owners, what is the fuel consumption like?Thanks

[v6hilux]

Depends on your measure of off-road.

In the hands of a pro, they are good. In the hands of a novice, it could be expensive.

Fuel consumption between 12-15L or more per hundred.

[macca81]

x2, i get around 14 per hundred behind an auto. offroad its good, likes the beach for sure, but good everywhere else still. does get a lil warm atm, but a fix for that is in the pipelines

[fester2au]

Do a Google and find the Surf forum. Unfortunately I can't remember it and deleted it after they scared me off.

There was a topic on the overheating problem and various ways they have gone about fixing it. After something like 10-15 pages of replies back and forward and many experienced guys detailing their "fixes" the end result was I saw no evidence that anyone conclusively fixed the problem. And many had thrown over a grand into new radiators and additional tranny coolers, extra fans, deleting the air con fan etc etc etc.

Nice looking trucks, well appointed and should be pretty good offroad but their talk of having to back off up hills and slow down for a while on the beach till temps came back down was enough to scare me off.

also had plently of people who had driven them tell me the 2.4's were gutless and the 3.0l' were pretty good but not great so that was enough to steer me in other directions.

Check that forum talk and see if you can live with their quirks as otherwise they are a great looking thing for the money.

[macca81]

Said Forum

im yet to have overheating a 'problem', but a manual doesnt suffer from the overheating as it seems to be thetorque convertor thats the problem. sticking a tranny cooler inline b4 the standard one should do the trick i rekon. if your not thrashing it then it shouldnt be an issue tho. as for the 3l not being great, i cant fault it at all

[fester2au]

Said Forum

im yet to have overheating a 'problem', but a manual doesnt suffer from the overheating as it seems to be thetorque convertor thats the problem. sticking a tranny cooler inline b4 the standard one should do the trick i rekon. if your not thrashing it then it shouldnt be an issue tho. as for the 3l not being great, i cant fault it at all

Maybe your right about the power of the 3 litre macca but coming out of a 4.8 petrol Patrol I realised I wouldn't be happy with the small donk. It was then the cooling issues that really put me off.

Yes it the torque convertor unfortunately far more autos than manuals out there. As far as the second tranny cooler, no sorry I did not real one post from the guys experimenting that categorically said yes I have cured the problem completely this is the mod to do. All said yeah an improvement but there was no real hot weather testing, some said temps rose but not as bad as before, some said temps rose a bit but came down quickly when powered off a bit.

For me that was no good. I was used to a good truck that NEVER got hot no matter what you did with it. Soft sand, towing, air con full tilt in stop start traffic for hours. And I was onyl looking at the Surf as good for the advertised money but not if I had to start throwing zero's after it to get it to run right.

Was sorry too as in every other way they present well. By the way I was only looking a couple of months ago so it's not like the topic was old and dead and not updated.