Just had a engine rebuilt due to main bearing going and had it sent to "Red Hill Engine Center" brisbane. Before i start talking here, i must note that this is NOT an advertisement for the above mentioned buisness. Its just a matter of where Toyota sent my motor.This story started between coonabarabran and narrabri where the cruiser started to rattle when i decided to overtake a truck(and a big bugger at that). The cruiser got worse very quickly and i found my family of 4 plus myself crawling at 50km at the max for the next 60km to Narrabri.Reaching narrabri i went directly to toyota thinking it was something small as i had no indication that it was a main bearing. The oil pump gauge at that time read normal, it wasnt until i was directed by toyota to go to a fella that used to work for toyota at narrabri that i found out it was possibly a main bearing and that the oil pump was showing no preassure until i reached his shop.So there was no driving that cruiser home. Well i was gutted to say the least when he told me roughly how much it would cost to repair. I ended up stuffing all our holiday luggage (which there was a lot of) into a hired car to get us back home to Tannum sands near gladstone in qld. The car stayed at his shop at narrabri to be picked up and transported home to Toyota here at gladstone. Not having my cruiser for the first time in 8 years was gut renching and even felt abnormal, as it had been reliable. The problem was due to ME for lack of SERVICES , as i didnt want to spend the money. Its funny when i think back, that right up to that moment the bearing totally went, the car still maintained that smoothness and was reliable to the max. I had no idea that this would happen and how wrong i was( which was my own fault. But $11,000 dollars later, i did learn a valuable lesson and that is to outlay the costs for the regular services. And to be quite honest,the $11,000 is a blessing compared to what it could have cost me.I did travel from port augusta right through Broken Hill to Cobar and it could have broken down way out there, so we were lucky. The only thing i know about this veichal tecnically is that i have to keep up my services. So a lot of my questions are going to be based on this experience and the engine being rebuilt. I am now very happy as the car is running even smoother and the steering feels better and i have a 12 months warranty or 50,000km(whichever come first). and the missus is happy. Thanks for listening.
