just for clarification and debate..the clarks are built in korea, korean owned now and **** parts..hyster and yale **** parts, crown even has some jp parts.. hate to admit put toyota has the market share to prove their reliability...i've competed with them for a long time and they are tough to beat in reliability and operating costs...gotta give credit where it is due.

Peon, in my experience that sulphur smell come from the air filter being less than clean. I have seen 2 in 1 of my accounts that experienced that exact problem. Cleaned the filter and the smell disappeared.
As far as the IC Toyota goes, it's a solid truck- period. I've worked for Alis Chalmers, Clark, and Crown/Doosan. The latter for 20 years now. I have a customer I tell to purchase Toyotas ( from a competitor and IC only) because I know how they tear up trucks. All electrics are Crown, and the IC's are Toyota. They're a 24/5 operation and demand tough trucks. Some IC's have 18,000hrs with no problems. They retired a 5 series with 26,000 hrs. I think Toyota slacked a little on the quality of the accessories, and hardware on the 8 series, however as previously pointed out, the powertrain is proven and solid. By the way, they also have some Crowns with 16,000 + hrs and no problems. ( sorry, had to plug the Crown as well )

Has anybody else come across that sulphur smell for the 8 series propane? Very heavy from the exhaust.

Tom H seems to think Toyota's are cheap. Toyota sells a premium product at a competitive price in most cases. Some of their equipment, stand up counterbalance specifically, is a less than average product at a premium price. I've found that if properly maintained its hard to find a counterbalance forklift with a lower cost per hour electric or IC.

FYI, Toyota makes a cast Iron V8- 4.7L available in the Tundra. They also last year made the industrial package (hardened valves, engine protection system standard on the GM since they had several issues with the standard GM package). I think your on track with the cooperation with GM but its not as good as a Toyota engine. The 4 cylinder GM they used to put in the 6 series-6,000# was proof enough of that.

Hello all, wow some interesting and and intense posts. I can tell you that after 13yrs as a mechanic and having worked on all major brands of forklifts, they all break down giving me a job so i can eat. I worked for Toyota for 8 yrs I have found that Toyota's were much easier to maintain and repair and there reliability was dependent on the application and how well they were serviced. I have also seen Hysters and other competitive brands just as reliable but difficult and time consuming to repair due to their design. I will say that i did encounter a capacity issue with the Ty 7 series compared to the 6 series. There is a bout a 500lb weight difference between the 6000lb 6 series and 6000lb 7 series. One of my customers traded in there 6 series for the new 7 series, they were both 6000lb trucks and the 7 series was to do the same job as the 6 series was. The 7 series could not lift the load without the counterweight coming off the ground, so we took care of the customer and made the truck a 7fgcu32 by adding a larger counterweight. This was not a spec issue or application issue. Eventhough I am a huge Toyota fan, i can admit that there was some issues with that, but i will say that Toyota made it right for the customer on every occaision. I am not a big fan of the 4.3 engine, but i do believe it serves it's purpose and does a great job for the punishment i have seen it take. I agree with Ty man, it's just not smart for TY design a new engine at this time. All forklifts will fail at some point and personally i would prefer to work on the the toyota, but if your a Hyster tech, you probabaly would rather work on the Hyster. It's what your comfortable with. Toyota is a good company and there are competitive companies, as well as small independent companies that care and work as hard to keep and maintain there customers. This might be a little off subject, just thought i would chime in and say my peace. sorry for the mispellings and grammar, thats why i'm a mechanic rather than an english teacher. Have a nice day!!

The reality of the GM enigine is that this is one of the only cast iron 6 cylinder engines that is used in industrial applications. As far as I know Toyota does not build a cast iron V6 or V8.

The volume is simply not there to justify designing and building a new engine.

Also Toyota and GM have a relationship on the car side of the business. Toyota builds a few cars for GM and also leases an assembly plant in Ca from GM.

the GM vortec 4.3l v6 has proven very reliable in various industrial uses and Toyota moters in that displacement are to high tech for such use + quite heavy so why not use the engine in there heavy units?

Gforce, Toyotaman is right, Raymond builds that lift for toyota but doesn't use the ac motors or newer technology that they put into their own lifts. I also do not understand why Toyota puts a GM engine in a 8,000#-17,500# lift. If I went to the Toyota truck lot to buy a truck and found out they were putting GM engines in them I probably wouldn't want it. Surely the #1 forklift maker can build its own engine.

Gforce,

If you want to get technical Raymond builds this truck for Toyota. Toyota still needs to stand behind it and ensure it is the highest quality product possible, but it's built in a Raymond plant.

Happy New Year Steve,
I know the series 7 personally.M/N 7BNCU20 S/N 50243 The Hydrolic pumps are made by HALDEX of Rockford Illinois. The motors that run them do use brushes. I don't have the part numbr for them here at home but I could get them for you. The set comes with 4 brushes. Two special ones with about 4inch or so yellow leads that plug into the motors heat sensor. If your motor is running two hot you will get a falut code. As for being happy or unhappy I'm indiferent. Just new to this web site and wanted to share my experiances. As far as the toyota goes. It all pays the same and keeps my job secure. I've worked on worse and worked on many better. The bottom line is. In a refrigerated warehouse and the high volume of business we do. The 7 cannot take the abuse it recieves. It is always easy to say "Train the opperators better." they make 5,7bucks an hour they don't really care. It is upper managements place for that. However. For moderate or light duty the TOY might be ok. Take care, be safe.gforce

Hi there gforce,

Well where does one start? First the 8 series forklift is only found in Toyota's ICE truck offerings, but you might not know that. Although if you had read all the posts in this forum you might suspect. Second, the Toyota 7 series Electric forklift has AC drive motors and AC motors don't have carbon brushes to "chew up". But maybe you wouldn't know that. Third, no major manufacturer of forklifts in the US neglects to use sensors and built-in fault/failure analyzers. Those monitoring systems make forklifts safer to operate and prevent accidents (like brake failures, electrical fires, steering failure, uncontrollable acceleration, etc..) But maybe you didn't know that, either.

But.......now you know. You might want to contact your local Toyota dealer and have your concerns addressed in person. Clearly you are unhappy about something and your dealer will work hard to resolve your concerns.

Have a happy New Year!!!!

We have 6 of the Toyota 7-Series. They are in a very clean environment and chew up motor burshes like no Tomorrow. The are to light weight in my opinion not allowing for normal factory / warehouse use. Not knowing about the 8-Series, if it is like the 7 they might be fine for a low traffic application but not for high volume. Save the sensors and Built-In Analyzer for the cars Toyota. End users need good technicians with a good PM program. For the 7-Series.... I perfer a different truck.

the fleet I work at got bought by YELLOW freight last year and we used to buy mitsi new we [b] only[/b] order TOYOTA 8 series
and our operators liked them better than mitsi fg25k!

First, a reply to wallboard. Your new Toyota's are throwing codes and your old Yale's did not. The reason for that is because the new forklifts have a Tier 3 engine which means stricter emissions and alot more sensors. The new engines will throw a code when you run out of fuel. The only time you need to worry about your check engine light being on is when the truck stops running. As far as the lifting capabilities of your new trucks, that is an application issue. You need to get with your local Toyota dealer, if you don't get satisfaction I'm sure there will be other dealers standing in line to take their place.