very low power on hills

[VeggiHilux]

1989 2.4td SSR Surf.
Seems to be more sluggish than normal lately, or else I'm imagining problems. It is having extremely low power going up hills lately. The other day, going up a hill with about 9% grade, and only 2 other people in the car, i started the hill at about 70kph, and within about 15 seconds had to downshift all the way to 2nd and was going a top speed of 35kph with no hopes of going faster. Vehicle has about 205k on it, just wondering if this is normal for a Surf of this era, I know their not speed demons, but it seems to be incredibly slow in the hills. Also has a grinding/gurgling noise that I described in an post a few days ago that only happens on uphill climbs. Power on the flats seems about normal.
All filters and oils, diff oils, transfer case, tranny oils all changed recently, within last 5000km. Same with air filter.
Any help or feedback saying this is just normal would be greatly appreciated

[wiggy]

Hi there not sure about the gurgling but i had the same problem with my old truck see http://www.hiluxsurf.co.uk/forums/sh...ighlight=wiggy this might be of help... problem was that someone had grafted a pickup engine/surf engine together( i didn't know much about surfs and it ran and all looked the right bits apart from loss of power on hills), and it took three years until a decent mechanic finally noticed (even after timing belt changes services/ harmonic balancer replacement) that the engine didn't have a place for the crank sensor (i thought i was just being stupid not being able to find it!) so it was rigged with a magnet to get the timing off the power steering pulley saying that it did the job for a bit but was stuck on 'get you home mode' with the top speed of about 70/80kph. Have you checked all the vacuum pipes and diagnostics yet?.

[Sancho]

Presumably, an '89 is going to be a 2LT so won't have all that electronic and sensor nonsense?

How's the transmission fluid? Oh, hold on, is it a manual? It's going to be the flywheel...

[VeggiHilux]

Thanks for the replies,
not sure if it has the 2 engines grafted together problem, but I just bought it and anything is possible i guess.
It is manual, and I was thinking that the flywheel might be making the noises. Would this account for loss of power too? The clutch was just done 10k ago by the previous owner. Not sure if he did the flywheel too. I'll get in touch with him to find this out.
Any idea how intensive it is to change out the flywheel? Could I get one for a '90 or so 4runner and use that? I'm in Alaska right now and would have to get any Hilux specific part shipped to me.
Also, yes, it is the 2.4LT, not the electronic one.
Cheers,