Everyone raves about how reliable these vehicles are but after doing some research It becomes difficult to find kei trucks and vans that have over 200km. I see a few but nothing like your average econo car. I can find camrys/corollas all day with 300-400k miles on the clock. I mean even the kei trucks that I see that are higher mileage. 200km only translates to around 120k miles... because these vehicles are super cheap do they tend to have motor issues sooner than other vehicles? Do people simply rave about their reliability because of the stigma that all Japanese cars are generally reliable? Or is this simply to do with the fact that these vehicles have essentially Motorcycle engines. I know bike engines don't usually run as long as your average car motor. Sorry if this post is poorly written. Writing at almost 3 in the morning.
They are as reliable as most any 25 year old car can be. Once you do all the preventative maintenance (replacing rubber/wear items, fluids etc) pretty much as reliable as any car out there. That said, a lot of these were used as farm vehicles and the owners likely treated them like work vehicles and probably abused them by overloading and/or skimping on maintenance. So you have some that come over with engine issues because water was used instead of antifreeze for instance or oil was never changed or brake fluid was never changed. The engines are high revving and require more frequent attention for things like oil changes and valve lash, timing belt changes. I do the timing belt every 20000 km and oil/filter changes 2x a year. Air filter at least yearly.
Just looking at be forward there are 10+ trucks over 200k miles, and one Sambar almost at 400k. The sambar seems to be the majority for high mileage kei trucks, but they all seem to be represented. I think the biggest thing is how you maintain them. If you're always on top of it, they last forever. Just oil and filters will get you pretty far. To stick with your analogy, I think they are more on the car side of touring bikes.
I read somewhere else that you can think of it as a reliable bike engine with 3 morbidly obese bikers on it at once which honestly, is a pretty accurate way to describe it. These quite literally are like your average cruiser bike engine.
One thing is that these are mostly used locally. I really cant spend more that about 45 minutes in it. So mileage (kilometerage?) is going to be lower than something like a Camry that is much more comfortable to drive around, and can run at highway speeds with ease.
I spent 11 hours each way from NC to FL, twice. I was comfortable, just stopped every 4 hours for gas and a break. Maybe the vans are more comfy?
