DID TOYOTA JUST DISCONTINUE MANUFACTURING THE LAND CRUISER?

Toyota has been killing the SUV game for years. They got the 4 Runner, the Sequoia, the Prado, and at the top of their game come to the Land Cruiser. Land cruisers have been a global favorite since 1957. After 60 years, Toyota is discontinuing the Land Cruiser which actually is heartbreaking. But what is it that makes the Land Cruiser so special?

Land Cruiser can take anything that mother nature throws in its way from land to snow, mud to seawater, the Land Cruiser has built up a reputation of being able to handle the toughest of terrain. So today we are going to discuss Toyota Land Cruiser and how it became the best SUV in the world.

Let's have a look that how Lexus might be behind the discontinuation of this legendary vehicle. You can find a Land Cruiser in just about any part of the world whether it's the Sahara desert or the middle of Siberia. Fact Check Alert: There's at least one Land Cruiser in every country in the world. But after 60 years Toyota has decided to discontinue one of the most esteemed names in off-roading but why?

Why is Toyota discontinuing one of its longest-running and best-selling model?

Before you can understand Lexus’s role one needs to understand why the Land Cruiser was so admired in the first place. Well, that comes down to one single word “Maximum Reliability” and a major component you need for reliability is your engine. The 2UZ FE engine, the J 100 and J 200 is a 4.7 liter V8 and it is so good that Toyota put it and many of their other vehicles like The Tundra, The 4 Runner, The Sequoia, and a Lexus GX470. The 2 UZ FE engine from the get-go was engineered to last and one of the most important things you can do to make an engine last is keep the temperature down. Toyota used lots of methods to keep the engine cool but one of the features they employed was the use of oil jets which includes a piston inserted into a cylinder. As that piston goes up and down during combustion it heats up and in turn, heats the block up and the rest of the engine components.

So to keep the temperature down Toyota utilized something called oil jets to maintain a proper temperature. At the base of the cylinder is a little jet that squirts out oil and the jet shoots oil upwards and hits the bottom side of the piston head cooling it down. That oil then runs back down to the cylinder in a cycle due to being shot out again. The 2 UZ finally came to an end though and Toyota gave the J 200 what we have now the 3UR FE. This engine is a 5.7 liter V8 and it brought the Land Cruiser the same Toyota reliability with some added torque or a little bit more fun. It features its own forged steel crankshaft forged connecting rods and aluminum alloy pistons with the resin coating. The forge internals in the 3UR really set this engine apart in terms of reliability and its brilliant successor.

All great cars start with a good frame so the Land Cruiser it's no exception. Going back to the J80 series Land Cruiser which featured a steel ladder-type frame that was great for off-roading and was reinforced in the later J 100 model. This reportedly is 50% stronger and more rigid using reinforced galvanized steel which stiffened up the chassis and help prevent rust. Toyota at one point had a history with rusty, Toyota switched it up with the J 200 engine though, and made it 20% stronger with thicker reinforced steel.

One important thing that all these frames share ever is that they're all assembled in a very similar way. Take the latest Land Cruiser the J 200 which flaunts a welded steel body shell combined with a full-size steel ladder frame. Let us explain, the J 200 is a body on frame construction which means the body sits on the frame of the car. Now, this is different from the more common unibody frame where the body and chassis are one cohesive piece. All the driving stress is passed through the entire vehicle on a unibody. With body-on-frame construction, all the stress runs through the frame. The unibody is more rigid because the whole body absorbs the flexing but this becomes a problem we need to take unibodies off-road. The whole car gets put under stress including things like the windows, the doors, and the hatches, with the entire body flexing these doors and hatches become distorted which sucks because then you can't open or close them. So for extreme off-roading purposes, this frame has a little flex which offers a good amount of articulation while putting zero stress on the body at the vehicle. Of course, the frame is doing a lot of work down there so Toyota made the whole thing steel having a higher center of gravity which offers good clearance on the rocks. But it isn't so great for handling on the pavement so leave it to Toyota to design a suspension system that gives drivers the best of both worlds on and off the road.

What is Kinetic Dynamic Suspension System?

Kinetic dynamic suspension system (KDSS) is one of the reasons that the J 200 is such a powerhouse. In order to understand how the KDSS works? See when you turn or swerve vehicle, the weight is being shifted to one side of the car. The faster you're going or the tighter the turn that's going to influence how much weight is being shifted to one side. So if you make a hard right, a lot of the weight is thrown to the left side of the car. This causes the outside or in the case left side suspension to compress. The sway bar's job is to control the body roll and help minimize that. Since the sway bar is linked to the wheels on both sides. It helps compress his suspension on the wheels inside the turn which prevents rolling during a turn stiff. Sway bars are great for the pavement but when you're off-road sway bars become more of a hindrance than there is help. See in off-road scenarios tires need as much movement as possible to gain as much traction as possible. The sway bars are traditionally fixed in your car without any room for adjustment ability. Now, this is where the KDSS comes in the folks at Toyota decided to replace one of those fixed points for the cylinder that has a piston in the center of it these cylinders are connected to each other by 2 little hose lines that run along with the chassis each hose line has its own independent oil reservoir so when 1 piston gets pushed up the other one gets pushed down. The more compressed the cylinder is the stiffer that sway bar is going to be. This allows the tires to drop down and find something to grip.

Another is the less engaged sway bar is got more room for the tires to drop down and find self-integrity. So how does KDSS function during turns on pavement well let's say you're making another right hand turn and all of your weight swings to the left-hand side suspension it's going to compress and the right-hand side suspension is going to expand since we have cylinders in both the front and rear boat. Pistons will be sending each other an equal amount of oil canceling each other out so this stabilizes both cylinders and allows our thick sway bars to do their job keep the car straight on the road for the off-road scenarios. Let's imagine your back tire loses grip because it's floating over a little divot in the dirt naturally your front tires are going to want to compress in order to carry that extra weight in your front piston is going to send that oil pressure to your rear piston which is going to push down and loosen that sway bar allowing for more articulation getting you moving forward.

Conclusion:

Toyota is a big company and rumors are that Lexus is going to carry the nameplate of Land Cruiser making it a big decision. Make sure to check out Factory Wheel Warehouse and Elite Wheels of Albany for buying the latest car rims in the industry. You can also customize your wheels according to your will and we can do it for you.

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