Thoughts on a Hiace Tomboy?

Hi all, first time poster and I'm glad I stumbled upon the forum! Sorry in advance if I'm putting this in the wrong spot. I have a 3 person family (daughter age 7) and I was looking at a Hiace Tomboy for the dual purpose of (1) camping in the winter parking lots at Mt. Hood in Portland to go skiing in the morning and (2) using it for usual camper duties on the west coast in the summer time.

I live in a neighborhood where the parking is tight so it would be likely parked in front of my house uncovered.

It seems like the few that I've seen have the toyota 2L engine in them, I was wondering if y'all could give me some input prior to potentially forking over 30k for one of these things? I know it's going to be slow, but what flat freeway speeds should I be expecting? Besides looking for rust underneath and general condition, anything specific to the 2L engine I should be aware of? Is there some things to inspect for the locking 4x4? Anybody know of good mechanics in Portland that would know how to work on one of these things?

Thanks all, appreciate all of your sage advice!

Hello ‘peiell’ and welcome to the forum. Don’t worry at all about anything in the wrong spot. I think your post is exactly right.

I’m unsure what a ‘Tomboy’ is. Is it a special edition Hiace? Or some local vernacular for a typical Hiace?

These vans are almost exclusively JDM but a lot have seemingly gone to the nw USA and there seems to be a nexus there. You might want to look at https://www.vanlifenorthwest.com/ but I’m not in a position to specifically recommend; it’s a site that gets mentioned and they do seem to cater for these.

Another great site is https://www.hiacesoutheast.com/ It has a lot of resources that can help, especially once you have a model code.

Also, it might be worth having a look at the fairly long post in my show-us-yours section. I do make reference to the hiaceshoutheast site a few times and other sites.

It’s useful to know the model code (see my post and the hiacesoutheast site) to determine the engine and other model features. The 2L is a 2.4L diesel that had several variants (eg turbo) while the 3L was the 2.8L diesel that was N/A. The 1KZ gradually replaced the 3L but there are many considerations and this is just in the diesel line up.

Inspections, highway speeds and other specifics might wait, no? For general reliability and the like the Hiace shares a lot of parts with the similar-aged Hilux. 1990s Toyotas are / were generally very good but the 1990s was a long time ago in vehicle years. If you view through a shrewd and dispassionate eye you would never buy a ~30y old van.

Are you looking with your head or your heart?

I personally wouldn’t touch an old 2L, they are getting very old now and the 2.4 diesel is not particularly reliable. Head gasket, head, overheating in general. Age will mean lots of other problems.
I know it’s a camper and a very good versatile size but 30K seems crazy money for something mechanically quirky for North America and which may be problematic to repair.  
I would be wanting to keep $10K in the bank for repairs and maintenance.

Thanks all for the advice...  sorry it took me awhile to respond.  I took some of this advice to heart and abandoned the Tom Boy idea.   It actually sold to someone else anyway!  For those who were wondering what I was talking about, here's a link to the thing I was originally looking at (https://youtu.be/F3ndEDtdQPY?si=yX1qOdWMUbbNhkDT).   It's basically a Canada converted camper.

Soooo... I've moved on and found a potential keeper, bonus it's basically being sold 10 minutes away and has a better drivetrain.   I'll post it to a separate post just to keep it clean

Hello peiell.

Really useful to see the YT vid on the Tomboy, which I’ve now watched.

If I had a spare $30k and wanted a camper I could stand up in fully then I’d have had no problem in buying this. Fortunately for me it’s sold, was on the wrong continent and wouldn’t have fitted in my garage.

While the price seemed steep, the camper was said to have only done 60 thousand km and this looked genuine. ‘Go find another’ as they say. The ‘truck’ the camper was built on, while nothing astonishing, is a very good vehicle and will last for years. It also looks to be in excellent condition for age, but as ever, things do age with age as well as use.

I think the trucks share a lot with the wagon (engine, suspension and drivetrain), but I think these have a ladder chassis as they are often built into flatbeds, with either a single or double-cab and I don’t this could be done from a wagon variant, which has chassis elements but it’s not a body on frame vehicle, I think. With the wagon I don’t think you could pull off the body, which I think you can do with these truck types.

My final observations are that I’d expect this to be fairly slow. They say it’s a 2.4L ‘3L’ but it must be one or the other. I don’t think the 3L was built as a 2.4L. The plate would describe this. It’s also probably quite heavy and I doubt there’s a GVM on the plate but the Canadian Tomboy people may have done this. Where there’s a lot of vehicle mass, it can leave little spare room for contents, too. It would be interesting to know if it really could tow much or whether the hitch was just for a bike rack.

I’ll have a look at your other post.

Cheers!!