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Published on 19 January 2020

One other thing regarding the reliability of the A70 supra is that they had an unfortunate head gasket failure problem from factory. This problem effected the 7MG and 7MGTE engines. Toyota had not applied the correct tightening torques to the cylinder head bolts (too low), especially for the turbo engine. It was in the field after a few thousand cars were sold that customers were returning their cars to dealers with blown head gaskets and at first, Toyota blaming the customer for causing the problem. It wasn't until there was an onslaught of the problem coming back that Toyota started looking at the production torques that they realised it was going to be a huge problem. But they didn't stop production while attempting to deal with the problem, which meant that every 7M engine produced had the potential to have head gasket failure. It was an amazingly designed and built engine besides that with an unkillable bottom end. If you purchased a cressida or supra with a 7M variant you could expect the head gasket failure to occur any between 5000 to 200000 kms but expect it because it will happen. I purchased my A70 supra, a 1988 build in 1999 with 130000 kms and HG still intact. At 160000 the HG failed. I was expecting to do it at some point along the way anyway. I did a complete engine rebuild and full remachine of block, head, Conrad's, crankshaft, turbo, and several other components. To do it correctly you MUST machine head and block to guarantee endurance. Almost 20 years along and the engine has proven itself to be bulletproof, I'm sure the way Toyota intended 👍