starter motor

Because they cater for the 10's of thousands who will never have a problem...... not the few who do.

But I know where you are coming from, I was shocked how hard it is to get the pistons and crank out. LOL

We see faults on all sorts of vehicles, what may be hard on something to remove and replace; may be easy on something else and vise versa.

Was the difficulty in removing the starter the only thing that stopped you upgrading?

Olcoolone,
It was the general disappointment of things like the alternator and the fact that the overall package did not seem a big step forward from my 100 series given I had to pay over $100k for it. The changeover would have been $60k+ and my 100 had less than 100k km on it.

I have since driven a 200 with KDS and admit it drives well but I found I had to have an expensive suspension upgrade from new to have the same payload I have in my 100 which has a slightly upgrade suspension.

I know/have met many people who now have 200s and most seem happy with them especially for towing. I lost the enthusiasm to changeover and am staying with the 100 until i need to change. At the (disappointingly) low number of trips I am doing it will probably see me out. I am currently home building an Earthcuiser like vehicle on an Isuzu NPS300 4wd truck which will become our expedition vehicle if it turns out as well as I hope.

cheers and sorry to John for the short diversion.

WE went through the same thing regarding suspension, but what we did find out was it didn't matter what 4x4 you have; they all have about the same carrying capacity...... I would say 90% of the 4x4's on the road travelling would be over weight.

We had two options when we did the upgrade, both using identical components from Lovell...... one that can carry more weight but not complied and the other complied. Price difference between to two was about $1400-$1600. We could of got the non compiled version fitted for around the $1300 mark; ours has KDSS.

The price difference between all suspension upgrades was on par and KDSS had nothing to do with the price.

Any vehicle you want to increase the GVM on will have a premium attached to it for paperwork.

I think things are better sorted now and more competition. When I looked it was less than 1 year after the release of the 200 and several suspension companies were not offering upgrades for vehicles with KDSS as they said they were having issues. The standard suspension was ok.

I have a general policy of never buying a vehicle less than 2 years after a major model change but was keen at the time. My enthusiasm evaporated (as did the $s) and as said above I have now moved on to a different project as we are getting older and want a bit more comfort.

cheers

Gday Ross,
Filling up the V with no more gaps might be cheaper :-)
But the problem of water sitting in the V and corroding the starter motor was addressed by Toyota and the V now drains by itself! Only the early V8's have the issue. But, I rarely wash my motor - and certainly won't with the V8.