By Tony K
One of the great things about Land Cruiser engines is the amount of oil they hold, even my little 3B holds almost 2 gallons. I really believe this plays a major part in the longevity of their engines. But I have never been thrilled with how black the oil seems to be when its time to change the oil. Not that this is always bad, all that gunk could be hanging out inside your engine and just piling up until it clogs something. But rather than just sit on my duff I decided to do something about it.
I remember running a very deep filter on an old pickup I had but couldn’t remember a part number. Then a couple of years ago I got my hands on a filter catalog from Wix. And one of the great things about it was the fact it had all sorts of specs in it. This allowed me to find that large filter again just by matching the specs of a stock filter to a larger one. All I had to do was match the thread size, filter media and the bypass pressure of the stock filter. Just so happens there was a perfect match.
My FJ62 and my BJ60 both happen to use the same filter, a WIX 51515. Probably the most common filter out there, used on a gazillion different rigs not just Toyota’s. A quick look through the Wix catalog showed that a 51773 had all the same specs except for one, and that was size. The Wix 51773 is more than two inches taller and this means more filter media with a minor increase in oil capacity as well.
There are a couple of things to consider if you want to use the taller filter. Changing the filter on a 62 is a bit inconvenient due to the fact that it is mounted with the threads down and the can pointing up. The taller filter has the potential to make a bigger mess if you are not fast enough at plugging the filter as you take it off the mount. Not very smart thinking on Toyota’s part for this one. But several years earlier they were smart
enough to hang the filter down on my 3B. This brought about my main concern on the diesel as the front driveshaft is directly below the filter but after some quick checks I was OK, the top plate on my u-bolt flip kit will hit the bumpstop before the driveshaft destroys the filter. Just make sure to check clearances on your rig prior to making the swap. If you don’t run a flip kit, you may need to lower the bumpstop to protect the filter but this would be easy just by adding a spacer and longer bolts to the bumpstop.
If you are not a fan of Wix filters or the parts store doesn’t stock them you should be able to get them to cross reference the Wix number to another brand. But I can’t guarantee they will have the same specs, ask to see the specs or have them make sure they match the stock specs.
And just because I added more filtration doesn’t mean I go longer between oil changes, I still change it about every 3000 miles due to just how much gunk is in the oil of my diesel. Does it stop the oil turning black? No, but I do like having the extra filtration of the larger filter, even if the oil still goes black in a hurry. But I will admit it does take a little bit longer to do so. So on some level I am sure it helps add a few miles to the life of my engine.
