FJ80 Land Cruiser Starting Issues
Since I’ve had my Toyota FJ80 Land Cruiser, I’ve only had to deal with a few electrical issues, the Center Diff Lock, the Window Actuator Motor and the Fusible Links from the battery. The first prevented the transfer case to lock up in four wheel drive, the second prevented the window from rolling up, and the third prevented the engine from starting.
Now that I’m a year into the ownership of the Land Cruiser, I’m onto my fourth wiring issue. The engine will simply not start. It started last Thursday when I made a run over to the Cle Elum River near Salmon la Sac. I had one episode where it would not start for about two or three minutes and then it started up fine for the the rest of the trip. On Saturday, it happened again, this time in the grocery store parking lot. This time it would not start until after about ten minutes of trying. Finally, this morning (Monday) when getting ready to leave from work, the little tractor motor would only spin and would not fire up. Of course, this was accompanied by record rainfall in Western Washington. Perfect timing.
I was able to do a little diagnostics today. After breaking out the factory service manual and my test meter, I was able to determine that there was no spark from the coil. The coil tested out fine. After doing a little research on ih8mud.com, all indicators pointed to the ignitor. The ignitor sends pulses from the ECU to the coil. The symptoms of a bad ignitor on a 3FE powered 80-series Land Cruiser are no spark, engine turns over, no start, and the tach needle is dead. Exactly the symptoms I had. So off I go searching for the part.
The first stop was the Toyota dealer. New the ignitor had a list price of $490 with a no return policy. Ouch. On to the used market. Luckily, the part was used on early 90’s models of Celicas, MR2s, Previas and Tercels. I was able to find the ignitor for only $125 late today at a local yard (and of course no returns on electrical parts).
Being all excited that I had the part to fix the Land Cruiser, I hurried over and installed the ignitor in the dark and between downpours. Nothing. It failed to start. I felt very bummed. Now the Land Cruiser will have to sit until Wednesday when I’ill have an opportunity for additional testing of the circuits.
Had I done a little more investigating (and followed the factory service manual a little closer), I would have discovered that the ECU requires a signal from the distributor pickup coil before it will send a signal to the ignitor. I just hope it’s not the ECU or the distributor. Either item is not inexpensive.
I was able to take some time at lunch to diagnose the problem a little further in depth and found the problem. There is a wire connection/plug between the distributor and the ECU that when I inserted my test prongs into, one of the wires pushed out the backside. Had I conducted this test (in the pouring down rainstorm), I would have discovered the problem in the first place. Oh well, I just added to my spare parts inventory for those remote backcountry overland trips.