I was looking into purchasing a Hino 260 exp truck. I've heard their engines are bulletproof but when you need maintenance work it can get expensive and long wait for parts. The pros to this is the breakdowns are far and few between. Is this accurate to any other Hino owners or should I consider a different but similarly dependable model?
Hi there. I work on Hinos and other Japanese trucks for a living.
Let's start with the negatives. Hino's dealer network is not nearly as well established as most other major brands. Almost all Hino dealers are also the dealers of more popular brands of trucks, and most of the money set aside for training technicians and stuff like that goes to the more popular brands. In some areas of the country, Hinos are a rare sight. They'll send someone to all the classes but that guy might see one once a week or less, and all that training is quickly forgotten. With that said, every training class Hino offers is packed. Dealers are trying to get more people trained, and Hino is expanding their training facility.
Parts are fairly expensive.
These aren't the kinds of things that you can put together with an impact wrench. The Japanese assumed that if they published torque specifications, people would use them. Hahhahahaha! People with wrenches are constantly damaging these things, I swear.
The technical manuals are confusing as hell. You'll know exactly what I mean the second you open one.
Very little diagnostic work can be done without the dealer software. Pretty much all brands are guilty of this right now. But let's use a 2014 Hino 268 as an example. You could hook a generic code scanner to the 9-pin round connector, and you might get engine codes. You will not get anything useful from the dosing control unit, the burner control unit, you'll get no data from either, either. You could talk to the transmission and ABS computers, since they're running on the low speed data bus.
Sometimes some parts are backordered, sometimes with a long wait time. The most common replacement parts are usually well stocked. Rarely do we run into something that takes more than 2-3 days to get. This kind of ties into that crappy mechanic thing: There are some parts on the truck that will last the life of the vehicle. If some numbskull manages to break it, you might be waiting for a while.
The positives:
The engine architecture has been around for a long time. It's been evolving and improving. Things are constantly being updated. For example, there have been improvements in piston design, with the newest models going to an all steel piston to better reduce thermal stresses. They have updated the piston cooling nozzles. There have been updates to the sealing surfaces of the oil cooler. Updates to the head gasket (for anyone reading this with an external oil leak from their head gasket, there is a new one just released to fix this very problem). The injectors have been updated to include diamond-like carbon coatings on wear surfaces.
The cylinder liners are nitrided. Idk of any other manufacturer doing this. If the truck hasn't suffered from a colossal overheat, the cylinder liners basically don't wear.
These trucks are capable of getting pretty good fuel mileage, especially if they are geared appropriately for their application and aren't driven like race cars.
The 05-14 conventional trucks have brakes, axles, transmissions (aside from earlier trucks with Aisin transmissions), ABS systems, etc. from well known American companies like Eaton, Meritor, Allison, etc. Stuff that all diesel mechanics are familiar with.
If a shortcoming is noticed and reported and it can be improved via computer reprogramming (aftertreatment systems fall into this category), Hino has no qualms about recalling every single truck and reflashing the computers. 11-13 conventional trucks were a good example with their dpf heating systems. These were problematic. Reprogramming the burner unit and putting in a set of longer igniters vastly improved their reliability.
Their warranty is pretty good. Injectors went south and it cooked the dpf? No problem, you get all new injectors and dpf. That's like 8-10 grand worth of parts right there. There's actually a recall campaign going on right now for older 08-10 trucks. ECMs getting reflashed, if the dpf is damaged it's replaced, no questions asked. Exhaust brake is set correctly.
I could go on and on and on and on. Do you have any specific questions?
There's also a thread stickied at the top of this forum that might be worth reading. Some of the earlier posts are already obsolete because things are always being updated.
