Is Toyota V35A-FTS Engine Reliable? Well..It's Not That Simple

About 1 month after filming this video, (and 6 years after Chris replaced his first V35A-FTS with main bearing failure), Toyota FINALLY released something official with a safety recall on 5/30/2024. Root cause was machining debris as some of the internet comments correctly predicted. Check out the official recall here pressroom.toyota.com/toyota-recalls-certain-model-…

bro bought a research paper. and talked to the man himself. subbed.

Nobody makes these videos the way you do. Others do lots of speculation, but you do proper research and make it easy to digest too. And no fan boy bias! Very impressive.

I’m a tech at a Toyota dealer in Canada and we’ve had 6 tundras with the same bearing issues. Some were work trucks and others were just daily drivers but they all failed in the exact same spot. All got short blocks and 2 of them were seized solid when they came in. One of them took so long the guy bought another tundra and then had the same issue with it so he bought a trd pro instead of waiting to get his first 2 fixed. We ended up buying the trucks back from him.

As an owner of a Nissan and Toyota V8 vehicle I appreciate this video. There is no replacement for displacement. High strung, stressed engines require frequent rebuilds and are for race cars.

As a tech - here is a "Hack" when it comes to research papers. I had the privilege of working as a technician on research expeditions to remote locations and made a few friends in the industry. Look up the person who wrote the paper - ask them for the paper, and they will happily send you their paper- which, in most cases, they are allowed to do. The grunt that wrote that SAE paper probably didn't see a cent of your purchase sooo they will probably enjoy receiving your ping from somebody who actually wants to discuss and converse about something that they spent so many hours on getting published. Not to mention the opinion of the person who wrote the paper. -Magic

I'm a mechanical engineer and I live in Huntsville, Alabama, and I know I've heard some of the old v8s and the new TT v6s are made here at the Toyota plant in town. I just google'd "V35-FTA Alabama" and one of the first results is a forum post mentioning that, *allegedly*, one of the shifts at the plant was not properly cleaning out the engine block oil passages for some length of time till they caught it and corrected them. This would cause metal shavings to still reside in the block, ultimately getting forced to the crankshaft main bearings once started, resulting in inconsistent and sometimes substantial wear & damage to the bearings once the engines get fired up. If that's true, then perhaps the root-cause does not lie within the engine's design. Food for thought.

i am from Saudi Arabia, and here we have a lot of Lexus LS500s and land cruiser LC300s, and recently after one or two years we started to notes the increase of those specific turbo charged cars going to shops and dealers for this specific issue, and most of the shop owners are starting to tell the people to not buy these cars yet, one shop even reported having more than 30 vehicles come to hos shop for bearings issues, and started a new way of fixing by pulling the engine from the car without removing the hood to cut costs and save time.

Man I’m happy that I bought the last V8 engine in my GX460 2023 model last year, I knew that there were going to be problems. I’m also an engineer who worked in automotive for several years.

Undersquare geometry also generally works well for boosted engines. With better breathing efficiency, you don't need valves to be as big. Which means lighter valves that can have lighter springs and less contact stress on the cam, that kind of thing. With a smaller bore, you can have a smaller combustion chamber which can help produce the "high speed" combustion Koji mentioned. When they say "high speed" what they mean is that the burn is complete sooner after TDC. Which means that the effective expansion ratio is higher and you have more basic efficiency (think back to a LogP-V chart in your Thermo class). The high torque output doesn't necessarily mean a high peak cylinder pressure, it just means a high BMEP. So if toyota is finding a way to make higher average power stroke pressure while not spiking peak pressure, you can have both high torque as well as reliability.

Im simple man. I see tinker i click

My new neighbor is a Toyota mechanic in a very large dealership in Dallas. I asked about the 3.4 failures and he showed me a picture of 8 blocks in crates sitting out back. He says it seems to average ~20,000 miles when they fail, although he has seen it as soon as 6,000. I think it's happening more than people realize.

I bought my Tacoma in 23 because I don’t want to be part of Toyotas drivetrain experiment

You really made the most of your time with the chief engineer. I saw other videos interviewing him on the GX and noone was a prepared as you. Well done!

The reason why I like your videos is how simple you keep it for the average viewer to understand and deep you go into topics! Very informative! Keep it up!

Nothing beats a NA V8! I don't care what ANYBODY says! Toyota should have just kept their V8!

This was my introduction to your channel. Def got a sub and a like and a lifetime watcher man. Fantastic work without any apologies or excuses made for the subjects of the video and you made the videos about something, not all about you, which is the trap of most creators these days. Kudos!

Men of culture we meet again

This is the best automotive channel on YouTube.

40 years as an automotive/diesel tech. To quote my favorite engineer "The more complicated the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain." The only reason everyone is running a turbo these days is to try and eek out a few more mpg to get past fuel economy standards and to fool the customer into thinking they arent looking anything. Honestly, 95% of car buyers are ignorant and just hear turbo and in the head turbo=fast.