V8 v.s. 4 Cylinder LandCruiser Dyno Tuning shootout! New 79 Series compared towing & offroad

Could the new automatic four-cylinder 79 actually be a better tourer than the tried and true V8? Tommy from Performance Tourers and I are going to find out by doing a towing test off-road and then we're going to chuck them on the dyno to see which one makes more power. Let's go. We all know that the main difference between these two Land Cruisers is in the engine and powertrain. This cruiser is still sporting the proven and reliable eight-cylinder four and a half litre engine paired with a five-speed manual. But now you can option the four-cylinder that comes from Toyota's Hilux with an automatic in the 70 series. There's a couple of subtle differences though, so let's take a look. Well Tommy, mate, time to compare these vehicles together. Now first things first, obviously the engine is a little bit different than the V8. What can you tell us about it? Mate, obviously it's a four-cylinder compared to a V8, no massive surprises there. This does have a water to air intercooler which is one of the biggest changes we've seen on the 2.8 in comparison to the N80 Hilux itself. This is something that we've seen in the past introduced recently in the 300 series and has a separate heat exchanger down the front there. Something I expect to see in the future for these will be upgrades because these are pretty well known for heat soak. Yeah okay, interesting. So you mentioned this is on the 300 or a water to air system on the 300. Is there a reason or why do you think they didn't keep the air-to-air front mount that's in the N80 Hilux and they went to a water to air on the cruiser? Mate, the main reason is ambient air temperatures and obviously heat soak with a completely separate reservoir for additional cooling of this intercooler. It allows the intercooler itself or the heat exchangers to stay cooler for longer under those harder applications. Yeah mate, interesting. So obviously different engine and transmission to the V8 in the new cruiser but the main difference between this 2.8 and the one in the N80 is this water to air intercooler on top. Aside from that there are a few subtle differences in the powertrain but that's something that we can cover a little bit later. So that's the engine and transmission. Now obviously the other main difference with this compared to the previous model is in cosmetics with more retro styling with round headlights and things but here's another point that I guess has been a topic of contention on social media. It's this gap between the guards. Now Toyota obviously know what they're doing when they design these vehicles and whether or not these brackets here and things will last say for example with a thousand k's of corrugations in the cape remains to be seen but I suppose the theory between that pumping up the guards obviously you get the retro styling but they've changed the ducting here and lifted up the bonnet to allow a different style of airflow for the top mount cooler on the VDJ. Yeah that's it Jock. It's not hard to see why they've gone with the likes of this ducting system rather than a traditional bonnet scoop. It's easy to see on the previous model if you've got a bonnet scoop there's a little bit of rain or a bit of water in front of the scoop itself and there's absolutely no flow going past that. So in comparison the ducting here air is physically being forced up through the ducting and down being forced straight onto the intercooler keeping those intake air temperatures down and helping you maintain that power for longer. Yeah interesting mate so obviously this is better for airflow onto a top mount with I guess a ram air effect through the front grill. Do you reckon there's a reason why they've stayed with a top mount and ducting but on the 2.8 they've gone to a water to air? Mate it's just a sign of the times. These manufacturers are phasing out these larger displacement V8 engines and replacing the smaller displacement harder working 2.8 for example. Ultimately I don't think Toyota were willing to put the R&D into this V8 engine because I don't think it's going to be around for that long at all. Both use a coil sprung leading arm front suspension setup and a leaf sprung rear. Both are twin locked from factory in the GXL model and have 130 litre fuel capacity. Both of these vehicles have a few things you need to keep an eye on plus a few essential modifications you need to make if you're going to tow or work them hard or use them off-road. Tommy's going to take us through what mods you need to do for each a little later in the video. For now let's get them out on the road and compare. On the road the 4-cylinder is leagues ahead to drive around town. It's easier with the auto, quieter with the 4-cylinder and from factory it's said to have 150 kilowatts which we'll be checking later. Initial impressions of daily driving the 4-cylinder around town it's pretty good. It's actually pretty nice and quiet inside here. I never thought I'd say that with the 70 series Land Cruiser. The auto and that 2.8 is paired pretty well together. It's got some get up and go as well when you put your foot down you know about it. Toyota have done some things to make this pretty Mickey Mouse. I reckon even after a tune this thing would go hard. A couple of things inside now we're not like most motoring journalists who test these vehicles looking at armrest squishiness and if a cup holder can fit a small latte which is a good thing too because the cup holders in this are pretty terrible. Well we're not here to talk about that. One thing I will note about the interior though is the fact that you pay a lot of money for one of these vehicles and the speakers in this are the same that are in my 30 year old LM106 Hilux. Like come on man what are you doing? That said though I've never thought I'd say this but it's pretty quiet inside here. It's pretty nice to drive and everything except parking with that shocker of a turning circle this thing is pretty good around town. I'm liking it. The V8 is much more agricultural around town. First gear is short so you'll be changing out of it quickly. Often it's easier to start in second gear. So I've spent enough time now driving the V8 and the 2.8 as well and honestly I would have to say that the 2.8 has most definitely got a and hold the road speed far better than the V8 in the towing application. Here are some interesting numbers if you're curious about different weights of these vehicles. Now all these numbers are based off kerb weight in the vehicle. What is kerb weight? Well that's an unladen vehicle so no payload and nobody in the vehicle with standard accessories fitted and a So with that in mind the four-cylinder 79 series is around 55 kilograms lighter than the V8. So not that much but all the GBMs of the vehicle so the total amount it's legally allowed to weigh are the same at around 3,510 kilograms from standard. Interestingly though the four-cylinder 79 is around 75 kilos heavier than an automatic SR5 Hilux. What am I getting at with all these numbers? Well if you're planning to load your vehicle up or tow a heavy load it might be worth considering the vehicle with a higher GBM you know a bigger chassis bigger diffs can handle more and considering those weights aren't that massively different to a Hilux maybe the four-cylinder 79 is the better buy if you're planning to load it up or tow with it. To test the towing of both these vehicles we have a Maverick Mach 1 which weighs in at 3.1 tons. I'm really keen to see how this goes I'm sure Tommy is too because you know what they say there's no replacement for displacement I reckon the four-cylinder might have its work cut out for it against the big V8 only one way to find out though. Still gets up and goes keen to see what it does with a van. We did the same run up the highway with each vehicle we also measured the fuel economy of both on the same route whilst towing and not towing here's what we found. That first hill you definitely feel that the Maverick was on the back but I just stayed in fourth and cruised up I was doing like 90 kilometers up the hill and it still maintained it but you could definitely tell that hill was any steeper I probably would have had to do the old shift down maybe or who knows but like if you hooked up a 3.1 ton van to a standard 79 and towed it around Australia I reckon you'd get pretty over it pretty quick you'd probably want to do some upgrades to it but if you're just moving it around or going away for a weekend probably not awful you could you could get by with it I would say it'd probably be way better with a tune though. I'm not overly impressed with the way that this V8 Land Cruiser tows from factory at a slight incline it will drop speed rapidly even being overtaken by a few trucks so it's not an ideal situation to be towing a caravan and doing a significant amount under the speed limit everyone knows what it's like to be stuck behind a caravan and if you've towed a caravan you know what it's like to have a big lineup of traffic behind you beeping you and putting pressure on you to get around. Okay tell me you got a copy mate? Yeah mate I got him. Mate driving that V8 up the highway without the van on the back it definitely liked it a lot more but now being in the auto I have to say I'm kind of impressed I thought it would struggle but it's doing it okay how do you find it? Mate it didn't go the way I thought it would to be honest with you I've got to say honestly I think the 2.8 tows it better than the V8 I'd say it's got a lot to do with the fact that it's an automatic but yeah I was pleasantly surprised. Yeah I honestly did not think I would be saying this too but I agree I think the 2.8 is towing better in standard form with that auto I reckon you're right that's a that's a big thing. Yeah I found the biggest thing for me was slowed down through the roadworks there and getting back up to speed with the traffic I think it would have done it just as quick if not quicker than the V8 I most definitely wasn't holding traffic up as much as I was when I was in the V8. Definitely mate well let's uh haul back to performance tourism and hopefully compare those fuel figure numbers because I'm curious to see what the difference is if this thing just sucked the juice whilst towing or the V8 did. Unsurprisingly the four-cylinder did get better fuel economy around town of around 10.6 litres per hundred whereas the V8 got around 10.7 so it was only marginally better but still saved a little bit of fuel when loaded up the four-cylinder still got better fuel economy of around 18.3 litres per hundred whereas the V8 got around 20.6 whilst these numbers aren't too far apart and the V8 wasn't that much worse on fuel than the four-cylinder if you were to buy the four-cylinder you may see a bit more savings over time with slightly better fuel economy particularly if you loaded it up for a trip. It's fair to say they're going to drive pretty similarly off-road in terms of clearance traction aids and approach and departure angles and with a weight difference of 55 kilos it's not enough to hinder one more than the other where they will be a bit different though is in low range gearing throttle response off-road and control. So we recently did a heap of testing on you to the year between the different dual cabs in the market I'm really interested to see how these lane cruisers compare off-road especially in regards to the traction control system which was really impressive on the N80 Hilux in particular. Tommy I forgot that the 79 isn't known for its articulation off-road but this is a good little test for them how's the big V8 going? Not too bad I'll tell you what it's been a little while since I've actually had a wheel in a manual so I find myself actually wanting to be in the automatic instead I think. It's funny you say that mate because I would prefer to be in a manual right now but this vehicle does have hill descent control so on this super section here I might turn that on. Yeah it's interesting how personal preference comes into it and I suppose it's good now that the 70 series actually does have an option for an automatic or a manual based on your preference. Now we're not exactly rock crawling these things are very agricultural this is probably the kind of wheeling you would see if you are out on the farm and you needed to check out the back paddock and to be perfectly fair they're doing it quite easily it's not exactly the kind of wheeling that I would take a completely stock dual cab ute like a D-Max or Hilux down so realistically speaking it's doing it quite easily. Just cross over a little rut in this thing and it looked fine probably on camera but just not used to the driving position in these you sit quite high and they're quite narrow so it felt loose I can see why where we wheel with Timmy and some of the guys who run big 79s I can see why they get the wind knocked up when they're driving hard stuff because yeah hectic. In stock form the hill descent worked well although they both bottomed out scraping their diffs on the way down this would easily be avoided with a simple lift to fit larger tyres. Now to test out the traction aids on both going up. No surprises here but this auto is mint off-road so if you're intending to use the vehicle off-road I reckon seriously consider this one with the 2.8 in low range like I've got plenty of torque. This is a little bit more technical than I planned on doing in this car today. That V8 obviously the manual works well but as Tommy said it's quite quick and low range on standard tyres so you're probably going to modify it anyway let's be honest some bigger tyres or maybe even some gearing would sort that one out quick smart. Mate this is a good track to test them out hey a good test for them how have you found the manual and the V8? Mate to be honest with you I'm used to driving the automatic so it is a little bit different to what I was expecting and a bit different to what I'm used to so one thing I did find on it though is first gear in low range is geared just that little bit too tall when you're coming down stuff I was heavily working the clutch to try and keep my speed nice and low you come down that little clay section there. So obviously the easiest fix for that if you are doing this sort of stuff is bigger tyres yeah just to slow it down a bit. And obviously if you buy a dual cab like one of these and you are going to be doing a bit of wheeling it's realistically one of the first things you're going to do anyway. Exactly exactly well no surprises that auto has actually been fantastic off-road I was able to crawl stuff coming downhill I used the hill descent control a little bit just because I found you know autos on the brake pretty hard going downhill yeah but up the hill just cruised up. Righto Tommy well we're back in the workshop mate we've seen how the four-cylinder and the big V8 handled towing and driving around town now it's time to see how they handle the dyno what sort of numbers are we expecting to see with this? Mate generally speaking these are about 140 horsepower and about 400 newton meters out of the box on our dyno bear in mind they do vary dyno to dyno what we're expecting to see out of this one today is between 180 190 horsepower this one is a customer's car obviously he's building this to actually make a trip up to the Cape towing his boat and that's something we will bear in mind when we are tuning this vehicle. Awesome so we're going to do a standard run see what power she made for all the towing that we did and then going to do a tune and see what we can get out of it. Correct beauty let's do it. Alrighty let's get a start all right so this will be our baseline test and third run 140 horsepower so really consistent across the board. Of course the four-cylinder we had is a press vehicle from Toyota so we can't tune it but Tommy is a connected man and has sorted out another stock one to tune so you can see the difference. Alrighty time to see what exactly what we expected to see so baseline test is 160 horsepower that's 20 horsepower more than the V8 in comparison just check the torque and we're looking at 550 newton meters you just got to bear in mind that the torque converter in the automatic transmission will exaggerate those figures and that might explain why they did feel a little bit more punchy when we were tying that caravan. In order to tune the V8 properly we've upgraded the clutch whereas the four-cylinder is ready to tune thanks to the auto so let's see what power figures they get. All right so i made a few revisions and we're starting to get to a point where i'm happy with it should see the results very soon so it's taking us a few revisions to get to where we want it to be to be suitable for what this customer is going to be using this car for but yeah really happy with that so we've practically finished the tuning process on this 2.8 litre and pretty happy with the results so far so we're going to do back-to-back runs and do a comparison with our original then we'll take a look at that in comparison to the V8 here we go and there we are they're all finished up finishing up at 204 horsepower up from 160 so a really significant increase and realistically comparable to the V8. Tommy with the four-cylinder tune mate there are some some crazy numbers as a result talk us through it mate what are we looking at here? Yeah mate i don't think a lot of people would expect this four-cylinder to be able to put out the same power and the same torque as the V8 but evidently it is possible. That's crazy and i guess the interesting thing here so what we're looking at is the blue line is the results with the four-cylinder. Correct. And the red line is so i guess it's important to note that the V8 started with less power and then has made less power than what the four-cylinder has but the percentage gained was higher which is probably an important thing so by looking at that what it's gained about 37 percent more power than what it had from standard whereas the four-cylinder is around 27 percent so it's gained less power but it started with more. Yeah correct so as a percentage realistically speaking the V8 has made significant improvements over the four-cylinder yet the four-cylinder and the V8 are making comparable power after the modifications that we've done and i think something worth mentioning is as well is the bang for buck you know the small investment of a tune only on this 2.8 in comparison to the clutch and tune on the V8 makes a big difference. Yeah definitely bang for buck that makes so much more sense you you get more power out of this by essentially doing less but i suppose the V8 has more in it if you're willing to go to that next step and add those supporting and performance modifications down the line and i suppose it's also worth noting there's no wonder this towed a little bit better than the V8 it was making more power than the V8 in standard form. Yeah that's right it's a no-brainer made over 20 horsepower more and over 100 newton meters more than the V8 straight out of the box. Mate that's pretty impressive so the four-cylinder started with more power and has made more power with just a tune but what about some limitations you found in this with it on the dyno? Yeah mate so i've just changed to the screen this basically represents our back-to-back runs after we finish the tuning process when we're checking things over and that's us making sure that everything in the vehicle is up to scratch with the tune that's in it and what we found is the factory heat exchanger on this is realistically not up to the task and if you were to go further with this in performance upgrades you really would need to upgrade that component. Yeah okay so with these runs you can start to see that the factory heat exchanger has gotten hot it can't really cool that air efficiently anymore and that's something you'd see if you are getting more power out of these you'd probably want to upgrade that down the line but that said mate over 200 horsepower for a little four-cylinder and an auto compared to the 190 with the V8 and as we've mentioned before there's much more in a V8 as we've said a few times there's no replacement for displacement but it's pretty impressive that this smaller capacity engine can make more power with just a tune and as you said bang for buck maybe this is the better option. Mate it really speaks for the efficiency of the combustion setup in these 2.8 in comparison to the V8 and like I said earlier it wouldn't surprise me too much if they were on their way out and these are on their way in. We've seen what power these vehicles get from stock but what about if you tow a lot you run bigger tyres or you've added more weight to the vehicle with touring mods and upgrades what upgrades do I need to do to get more power reliably out of each? Some of the reasons you may benefit from these upgrades are if you're using your car for towing touring or you're just a trader with a really heavy load number one upgrade that you've got to start with on these V8 Landcruisers is a clutch. Quite simply the reason you need to upgrade your clutch is the V8 Landcruiser doesn't come with a good enough clutch to hold any more torque than it comes with from factory. Regardless of your power upgrade plans clutch absolutely must be the first thing you do. From there you've got other things like supporting modifications like these intercooler fan kits here, upgraded exhaust and from there you can go dive right into upgraded turbos, upgraded injectors, front mount intercoolers and the sky's the limit when it comes to this V8. As is the nature of this video you can understand that it is quite a bit more expensive to install a clutch and tune your V8 in comparison to just tuning the 2.8 litre. Realistically speaking achieving around 200 horsepower and 600 newton meters is relatively easy with either the V8 or the 2.8 but the one thing you have to keep in mind is because you have to install the clutch on the V8 and not the 2.8 you're looking around three times the cost to achieve that power figure. Something else worth considering if you're going to invest your money into either the V8 or the 2.8 is the difference in price in upgrades as well as maintenance. You can see the V8 here we obviously have eight cylinders that means eight injectors. In comparison you've only got four injectors on the 2.8 and that means when it comes time for maintenance around that $200,000 mark or if you were to upgrade your injectors you have a significantly bigger investment into producing more power with the V8 than you would the 2.8. Although the V8 is a little bit more cost effective to buy from factory if you consider maintenance costs and upgrades costs when you're buying your vehicle you may be a little bit better off buying the 2.8. When it comes to performance upgrades for the 2.8 a tune is a great start especially in comparison price wise to the V8 it's quite a bit more cost effective. Some of the things you'd want to consider straight away are supporting modifications such as your auto trans cooler, upgraded exhaust and in the very near future things like upgraded watered air intercoolers. From there other upgrades you'll have to make along the lines of injectors, stroker pumps and turbo upgrades as well. When it comes to these 2.8 litres we think tuning is great bang for buck in comparison to the likes of the V8 where you would also have to upgrade the clutch. Well Tommy mate this has been an awesome test we've seen how the V8 and the 4-cylinder go head to head around town, off-road, towing and most importantly we've seen how much power they make on the dyno and then what you can do to them with a bit of a tune. I've got two questions for you, number one which one do you reckon is the better buy and number two which one would you buy if it was your hard-earned money? I think mate for me the 4-cylinder would have to come out on top saying that if I was going to buy a Land Cruiser at this very point in time it would have to be the V8 even if it was just because we don't know how long these are going to be around for and if you were going to buy one now's the time because I got a feeling we may not be able to much longer. Yeah mate it's interesting because on paper the 4-cylinder wins, it was better at towing, it made more power standard, it was easier to drive around town, that auto is mint but I have to agree with you as well I think if I was going to spend my hard-earned money I'd be buying the V8 and the reason I would is because I think this at the end of the day even though it's better on paper is a less comfortable more expensive Hilux which is probably going to frustrate some people but to be honest man I reckon if I was going to buy a 2.8 litre I'd buy a Hilux it's more comfortable it's nicer inside yeah it's got the solid axle and you know a bit higher GVM and stuff like that it'd be perfect for a farmer or a tradie who wants a nice daily driver that can still do the work but get them into town easy I reckon this would be the go but you're right if I was going to spend my hard-earned money I'd be buying the V8 yeah I think if uh if it come down to you don't know which one you want one of the biggest deciding factors would be whether or not you want a manual or an automatic transmission at the end of the day they're both very impressive cars they both can be heavily modified as a lot of people do with the likes of the 70 series but for me it would be auto manual and obviously V8 or 2.8 yeah well mate really interesting results and I reckon I've probably annoyed a lot of people saying I'd rather buy a Hilux over one of these but in any case it's been awesome doing the testing with you and I want to know from you guys what would you choose the new four-cylinder 2.8 or the tried and true V8 four and a half litre let us know in the comments below thanks for watching catch you next time