Yoda Yoda Yoda
I've never had a import pickup,but several friends have had toyota and nissan trucks,and Isuzu "pups"and their close cousins the S-10 chevy pickups(early S-10's are Isuszu's in GM's clothing,they used the 1.9 liter engine the Isuzus had,and the same motor was used in the Opel GT cars for many years--not very powerful,but they did last awhile..
The Toyota's were good trucks,all the ones my friends had were beaten mercilessly even before they bought them,all had well over 150,000 miles when they got them--the only weak spot on them were the head gasket problems on the 3.0 V6 as already mentioned,and the 5 speed tranny's had problems with synchros and popping out of gear on one truck--and good luck finding a tranny in a boneyard for reasonable money--that is the main reason I've never owned one yet--parts are kinda scarce and costly when you need them....
It seems toyota owners strip all the useable parts off before they junk them,and the yards dont get many intact with good parts on them,when they do,its very pricey...the 22R engines are noted for long life,the only thing that goes on them is the timing chain after many many miles,the carburated ones seem to last longer than the EFI ones for some reason--I was amazed at how much weight my mason friend could load in his toyota and still maintain 80mph and get 20-25 mpg at the same time!--he often put more than a ton of cement and tools in it..
The Nissan truck the same guy had was a workhosre too--he loaded that one up with heavy stuff alot too,and hauled it 50 miles or more to the jobsites every day for years,until one day the frame rails decided to fold in half right behind the cab!(look closely at the frames on the toyotas and nissans--actually,just about all the imports had rust problems due too the boxed in frame rails,its hard to find a truck in my area that isnt rotted there)--his truck had the "Z24" motor that had 2 spark plugs in each cylinder,it was a very rugged motor,I could not beleive how rough he treated that thing and it kept on running--I bet it lives on in another truck somewhere!
