1989 Hilux Diesel Mystery Light

[War_Wagon]

Still searching for this winters winter car, I found an '89 Toyota Hilux JDM. So it's right hand drive sadly. It is however a 5 speed, 2.4TD. And it's cheap. Like dirt cheap. 224k KMs, it seems to run fine. I drove it around and initially none of the lights were on on the dash. When I gave it throttle, I could here the turbo making boost, and the green light to the left of the "Turbo" writing on the tach came on. I assumed that was the light to tell you you were in boost, like on old Grand Nationals. But once it warmed up, the red light to the right came on and stayed on. It still runs fine, and I can hear the turbo spool up, but the green light never comes on, the red one just stays on. I know nothing about these trucks, but I do know that generally a red light is a bad thing, especially when it's next to the word "Turbo". There are no manuals for this thing and I need to give the guy an answer soon. Can anyone fill me in on whether that light is the "30 seconds to turbo self destruction" or the "Everythings fine with your turbo, we just chose red to tell you that" light? Thanks!

[jcp123]

From some brief reading it be more of a general fault code than anything specific to the turbo...recommendation was to pull fault codes, however you do that.

I'll keep kicking it around the interweb though.

EDIT: upon further reading, it appears that light is a check engine light, rather than anything specific to the turbo itself. The green light appears to be turbo-specific, but I'm still unclear as to what exactly it indicates.

[Cobb]

Your oil pressure looks low, did it go down as you drove? Turbos usually get coked up for improper hot rodding and cool down time and poor maintenance of oil changes and weights.

[War_Wagon]

No that was warm, at idle oil pressure. It was higher when it was cold as it should have been. Probably should be higher but at the same time it is a 25 year old truck so I'm not expecting perfection. Maybe the oil lines to the turbo are clogged up and when the oil pressure gets lower it starts to get oil starved? Man I wish I knew what that light meant! I offered the guy $1000 for the thing anyway, I figured it'd be hard to go wrong at that price, even if the turbo is cooked. I'll find out tomorrow if I got it.

[Cobb]

Is it gas or diesel? Could be like an octane indicator? Is the air filter clean? Could be air filter indicator.

[War_Wagon]

It's a diesel. Could be the air filter indicator deal I suppose, but it would be on right from the time the truck started then I would think?

[War_Wagon]

Originally Posted by jcp123

EDIT: upon further reading, it appears that light is a check engine light, rather than anything specific to the turbo itself. The green light appears to be turbo-specific, but I'm still unclear as to what exactly it indicates.

Hmmm. You'd think that with all the fancy lights down along the bottom of the dash they'd have made the check engine light one of the bigger, easier to understand ones? Maybe it's the "Maintenance required" light? AKA the - "Nobody in this country knows how to reset the oil change light on your weirdo 25 year old Japanese diesel" light?

[Cobb]

Did the green light go off as it warmed up? Maybe its a cold/warm engine light? My honda has a light thats blue til its 127 degrees F then it goes out. When its over heating it comes back on red.

Man, I thought they had some international code to make stuff like this universal across cultures?

Kind of reminds me of this country song about a guy who buys a bug for his wife and cant get it to go backwards or turn anything but the engine. His wife gets in it, backs it up and asks why they didnt turn on the heat. Trust me, the song was funny 25 years ago when I heard it and it was written like in the 60s.

[jcp123]

Originally Posted by War_Wagon

Hmmm. You'd think that with all the fancy lights down along the bottom of the dash they'd have made the check engine light one of the bigger, easier to understand ones? Maybe it's the "Maintenance required" light? AKA the - "Nobody in this country knows how to reset the oil change light on your weirdo 25 year old Japanese diesel" light?

The thing about older FI setups is that there was no requirement or standardization about having any kind of check engine light. Many had none at all or if they did, they were hidden. CEL's were considered a higher-level technician's thing, intended as an indicator for the mechanic to remind him (her?) to check fault codes when the vehicle was brought in for an existing problem. Such systems are broadly called OBD 0. California was a pioneer in requiring well-marked CEL's on the instrument panel, and those were correctly called OBD I. OBDII was not just a US federal mandate, it also brought car companies to broadly standardize global models for both the same fault code protocols and scan tool connections, as well as more convenient check engine light placement in the instrument clusters.

[Cobb]

Interesting, I got a sidekick that the lamp turned on after x amount of miles regardless of vehicle condition and there is a switch behind the driver side speaker you flip to turn it off.