Fun thread, now let me introduce you to my friends Dunning and Kruger...
I can't help but think this is one of those situations where more than one thing can be true at the same time. Absolutely there are owners who's vehicles have serious defects that will lead to early failure. This is as true of the LC as any vehicle. It sucks, blows and stinks all at the same time. That's why we have warrantees, guarantees, lemon laws and lawyers in the world. You have my full sympathies and support that, after laying down your hard earned money, you deserve to be made whole for any such loss by the manufacturer.
Now does this mean every click, rattle and hum is a harbinger of doom that will leave you stranded in the desert to die of thirst and starvation? Probably not. Fact of life: Internal combustion engines make noise. The T24A has been around for a while now and from what I've read it's never been accused of purring like a kitten. Between direct and port injection systems, fuel pressurizers, multiple pumps, turbos, waste gates and a thousand other parts I've never even heard of if you're going to crawl into the engine bay with a stethoscope looking for a sound to make you anxious you're going to find one.
Try applying Bayes Theorem. This forum encompasses 4-5k highly engaged, highly motivated to report and share members who either have a specific ax to grind but more commonly just love our trucks and want them to be perfect. We are more likely to raise issues with each other and with the manufacturer because we love our babies (and per my comment above, don't want to die stranded in the middle of nowhere).
Now, I haven't run the statistics but my intuition is that in this and maybe a half a score of similar threads there have been maybe 2 or 3 owners per who have been able to document truly serious issues that have escalated the dealer for major repairs or at least discussion thereof while the rest of us are mostly just pearl clutchers commenting and looking for reassurance.
A handful of serious cases out of 5000 members isn't exactly an epidemic and it would be a mistake to extend the assumption that all ~50k+ LC owners in North America are prone to this level of hypervigilance. More likely their vehicles are making most if not all of the same sounds and they just don't care that much as long as they are not late for work and can keep driving. Yet, there's no been rash of broken down Landcruiser backing up traffic or filling up dealer's garages, at least not to my knowledge.
So, you can see how there can be both catastrophic outcomes at the anecdotal level but systemically there may be whole lotta nothing going on. Toyota's been in business and making money for a while, I think they know that that if they sell 30 or 40k of a model even at a low failure rate they will still get at minimum hundreds of unhappy customers filing reports under the best of circumstances and yet that's not cause to treat this as a systemic issue, at least not one that we all need to be up sweating bullets over every night.
Now, I don't entirely dismiss the logic that Corporate has its motivations to keep things under wraps and protect the brand, but, and I apologize in advance to those who do not fit this description, my experience is also that dealership mechanics are not great at saying "I don't know" when they legit don't know something and are prone to just making up a bull$#!t answer to get you to you shut up and go away. Hardly the sort of thing that recalls are built upon.
At the end of the day could Toyota be redesigning the main bearing and plan to replace all the T24A-FTS blocks? Sure, it's possible. I'm open to reassessing my analysis as new data comes in but am I confident that some floor jockey at a dealer in Nowhere'sville USA has the direct line to HQ in Aichi where the big decisions are being made? No. Now, if you and Mr. Sato are bestie's on Insta then by all means please give us the inside track...
