Toyota 1KZ-TE
3.0 L · inline-4 · turbocharged · diesel · 1993–present
Also known as: 1kz-te, 1kz-t, 1kz, 3.0 turbo diesel toyota, prado 3.0
Toyota's 3.0 diesel four — the 1KZ-TE — in the Hilux, Land Cruiser Prado and Surf.
It is indirect-injection with electronic control of a mechanical pump, which places it between the eras: there is something to read with a scan tool, and it is not much.
⚑ Its known failure is the cylinder head, which cracks between the pre-combustion chamber and the valve seat. It is common enough that a replacement head is a normal parts order rather than an exotic one, and the tell is the usual: coolant loss with no external leak, then pressure in the header tank.
Its other recurring items are the injection pump's electronics — the pump-mounted controller fails with heat and gives an intermittent cut — and glow plugs, which on a vehicle worked this hard are a routine service item rather than a fault.
The 1KD-FTV that replaced it is common-rail and has its own page here; nothing about the two transfers.
Cars fitted with this engine
2 generations, across 1 make. From the authored catalogue — an absent car means the catalogue has not reached it, not that the engine was never fitted.
Information, not instruction
CarGeek is a reference, not a service manual. Its pages are written from public sources and from what other people have found, never from a manufacturer's own service information, so they can be wrong or incomplete for your particular vehicle. Some of what they describe carries real risk: high voltage, fuel under pressure, stored energy, hot and moving parts.
Have anything you intend to act on checked by a trained person against the manufacturer's own procedure for your vehicle. Nothing here replaces that procedure.
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What makes one worth reading:
- The car — make, model, year and engine. The same fault behaves differently on each.
- What you measured, not only what you replaced.
- What actually fixed it — or that nothing did, which is worth knowing too.
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