OK – first up a warning: If you own an 80-series Land Cruiser with a 12-valve 1HD-T diesel and you don’t know when the bearings were last changed, do them now. Seriously – right now. Go. RUN!

I’d been mooching around on the Toyota Landcruiser Owners’ Club UK forums for a few months before I actually bought my 80-series and found that one of the things that constantly came up in conversation was big-end bearings (or BEBs). For the non-mechanically minded, these are little semicircular soft-metal bearings that live between the big end of the connecting rod and the crank.

Their good condition is critical to a happy engine as failure of them can be mechanically catastrophic and cause major engine damage, the most spectacular of which is probably a connecting rod making a bid for freedom by bashing a hole through the side of the engine block. If that happens, it’s basically bye-bye engine and one of the few things that can be an uneconomical repair for an 80-series.

Of course, with this being a Toyota, the engine will soldier on without so much as a knock, click or any other kind of audible indicator. So when I got mine, the first thing on the list of to-dos was to do the BEBs. My shopping list to do the job was as follows:

  • A set of ACL BEBs (bought from Julian Voelcker at Overland Cruisers, 0845 508 6863)
  • 12 new genuine Toyota big end cap bolts (part number 13265-17010)
  • A tube of graphogen paste (eBay) – used for pre-lubricating the journals during assembly
  • Toyota FIPG or similar “instant gasket” silicone compound to re-seal the sump
  • Jacks, axle stands
  • Torque wrench
  • Socket set
  • 12 litres of engine oil
  • Genuine Toyota oil filter
  • Sharp knife (stanley knife or similar)
  • Gasket scraper
  • Paper towels

Replacement BEBs

Graphogen paste

Decent quantity of oil

The night before you’re due to start the job proper, drain the oil and leave it draining overnight. The more oil that comes out now, the less there is to drip on you the following day!

I budgeted a weekend to do this, half of which was wasted on me being stupid when trying to remove the sump :-) With FIPG seals, it makes a lot easier to remove them by running a sharp knife around the seal before trying to pry it away. Remove the twelvety-thousand bolts from around the sump flange, then hammer a gasket scraper or thin screwdriver into one corner of the sump and bend the corner away from the seal to allow the blade in. Run the blade around the sump, prying as you go. With sufficient prying, hammering and swearing, the sump should then part company with the block. You may also need to remove the webbing that runs between the lower block and bellhousing to allow the sump sufficient clearance to drop once free.

The sump will have enough clearance to come free assuming that the chassis, not the axle, is supported by axle stands, allowing the suspension to extend and the axle to drop away from the bottom of the engine. Once off, I gave the sump a bit of a clean:

Cleaned oil pan. Level sensor on right-hand side.

Once the sump’s off, the rest of the job is actually quite easy. Remove the oil pick up / strainer assembly to improve access to the big ends. On doing this I found my strainer was a little clogged with some left-over FIPG, so I took the opportunity to cut it away and wash the strainer in diesel.

Spin the engine until cylinders 1 and 6 are at bottom-dead-centre. Working on one cap at a time, undo the cap bolts, pull off the cap, then gently push the rod upwards just enough to allow you to remove the bearing from the rod end. Don’t push the piston too far up in the bore otherwise you risk the piston top hitting one of the valves.

Pull the old shell from the rod end and from the cap, insert the new shell and smear a thin coat of graphogen over the bearing surfaces. Pull the rod end back down and seat it back on the crank journal, then locate the cap on to the rod end. Cover a pair of cap bolts in fresh engine oil, then torque them in three steps to their final value (as printed on the label on the cam cover). Once torqued, mark the cap bolts with a tipp-ex dot or similar on the edge closest to the crank. Turn the bolts the final 90 degrees – the white dots should now point fore and aft. Repeat this process on the rest of the caps, working in pairs, rotating the engine in between each pair.

New ACL shell waiting to go on

When all six big ends have been done, double check that the white marks on the cap bolts are all pointing in the correct direction.

Refit the oil pick-up tube and strainer. Clean the sealing surfaces on both the oil pan and the engine block, apply a bead of FIPG or equivalent to the sump and refit.

Refill with engine oil, then disconnect the fuel solenoid at the injector pump to allow the engine to crank without starting. Crank the engine a few times for a few seconds at a time to prime the oil system, then reconnect the fuel solenoid and start the engine. With any luck it’ll sound exactly the same as it did before :-)

Just for shock value, here’s one set of BEBs that came out of my truck – remember it wasn’t complaining in any way about this!

And finally, a YouTube video of what was going on part-way through: