A month ago I dropped off my 1992 Toyota Landcruiser at Topline Engine & Repair in New England, North Dakota for diagnosis and repair, because it would not start.

During more than three years of driving this vehicle, it always started, ran, and drove fine, up until it wouldn’t start one morning. I then tried replacing the fuel pump, fuel pump relay, several fusible links, cleaning the distributor & cap, replacing the ignitor-to-distributor inductor wire, and several other things. I couldn’t get it to start, but it cranked normally, just like it had since I bought it.

The last things to replace, seemed to me to be the “ignitor” and the “ignitor control module”, but these two parts together cost about $500-$800. I wanted to have someone else diagnose this vehicle, before I possibly needlessly bought a new ignitor and ignitor control module. So I towed this vehicle to Topline Engine & Repair to have it diagnosed and repaired.

Brian Herold, the owner of Topline Engine & Repair, called me and told me that he got this vehicle to start and run, he replaced the distributor, cap, & rotor. But Brian said that it didn’t have much power. He offered to find out why it was not running at 100%. He spent some more time on it.

After some discussion with Brian about what else could be done to this vehicle, such as him suggesting removing the engine head to check and replace a possibly stuck-open exhaust valve, I decided to hold off on additional work. I couldn’t understand why the possibly stuck-open exhaust valve, couldn’t be checked by simply removing the valve-cover to look at it? The Bill at this point was $1,130.

When I arrived and paid the $1,130 Bill, got in the vehicle and turned the key, there was something major wrong with this vehicle. It wasn’t “lacking power”, it was barely able to run. The engine would not hold a steady idle, the engine would stall at idle, the engine had to be revved to over 2,000 rpm to keep it from stalling when shifting into Drive or Reverse, and the engine sounded horrible.

The engine was running so bad, that this was not a matter of an exhaust valve being stuck-open on one cylinder, or even two cylinders, there was something wrong with ALL cylinders. The engine wasn’t missing its 26 horsepower from one dead cylinder, or even 52 horsepower from two dead cylinders, it was missing about 20 horsepower from each of its six cylinders. That’s why this vehicle was not able to be driven without stalling, it was missing about 120hp out of its total 155hp.

One thing that would cause ALL cylinders to have a faulty exhaust-valve and intake-valve opening, would be if the timing-chain jumped one or more gear-teeth. This is also one of the few things that would explain a completely normally running vehicle and engine to suddenly turn into a horribly running engine across ALL cylinders, the timing-chain jumping one or more gear teeth. But Brian Herold never mentioned this to me as a possibility. It is still a possibility that the “ignitor” and/or “ignitor control module” are faulty, that would also explain mis-fire on ALL cylinders.

I could not believe that Brian Herold turned over my vehicle to me like this, after paying $1,130. This is not fixed, I wouldn’t even call this running. I stalled ten times getting this vehicle home. The engine does not produce enough power to shift it into Drive or Reverse without stalling:

I did not place a “stop payment” on my check, but I thought about it. What would you do?

Update 12/24/2024

Yesterday, 12/23/24 I was served some legal documents from attorney Jennifer Grosz, accusing me of Defamation. I have not made any UNTRUE STATEMENTS OF FACT. This caused me to look further into this matter, to do more research about the people involved, what kinds of things have happened in the past. I needed more information. Have there been disputes, court cases, and litigation in the past? Here are some additional STATEMENTS OF FACT that I discovered:

North Dakota Case Number 45-95-K-00800

North Dakota Case Number 21-11-C-00020

North Dakota Case Number 21-2012-CV-00005

North Dakota Case Number 21-2012-SC-00005

North Dakota Case Number 21-2019-SC-00011

North Dakota Case Number 21-2021-CV-00032

If clicking on the above referenced internet hyper-links does not work, you can enter in the Case Number on the North Dakota Court Repository Website and do a Case Number Search. The first case is searched in the Criminal category, the other five cases are searched in the Civil category, select Stark County https://publicsearch.ndcourts.gov/default.aspx

Update 3/18/25

At the end of of October 2024, I towed this 1992 Toyota Landcruiser to a very busy automobile repair business. I asked this repair business to remove the Landcruiser timing chain cover to see if the timing chain had jumped one or more gear teeth on the crankshaft or camshaft. They did what I asked and found that there was nothing wrong with the timing chain, timing gears, or timing chain tensioners.

Next, this auto repair business removed the engine valve cover, and found that there was nothing wrong with the valves, valve stems, valve rockers, or valve springs.

Next, this auto repair business was compression testing each of the engine cylinders, and they found that Cylinders 5-6 were leaking through the head gasket into each other, and Cylinders 1-2 were leaking through the head gasket into each other.

This engine malfunction condition was much worse than one or two “dead cylinders” that might result from a couple of stuck valves. Cylinders 5-6 and Cylinders 1-2 leaking into each other through the head gasket was interfering with every compression stroke, power stroke, exhaust stroke, and intake stroke on these four cylinders. In other words, Cylinder 3 and Cylinder 4 were the only two correctly functioning cylinders, resulting in a TOTAL of about 52 engine horsepower, instead of 155 engine horsepower.

This auto repair business removed the engine head, had the engine head machined, replaced the head gasket, and now this 1992 Toyota Landcruiser is running correctly: