Somebody PLZ HELP!!!

so yesterday i cranked up my 97' 2.7 4x4 Tacoma, and when i crank it , it acted like it wanted to die, the idle was very sluggish and when i took off it didnt clear up till bout 2,500 rpm. I took it to a local garage and it hooked up to a diagnostic, it said that it had a misfire in the 1st cylinder, so my first thought was bad spark plug. So I grabbed 4 all new spark plugs and started taking the old ones out. The old ones were black as coal and were burnt pretty bad, weird thing is that I jus changed them a month and a half ago. And I flushed my radiator out (just because it needed to be done). After all this my truck still ran terrible and almost did not want to stay idle. So is the head gasket blown?

 

did you have oil in your prestone? (will usually show up as brown brew substance)
Did your engine smoke ( white = prestone , blue = oil , black = too rich gas )
does your oil have prestone in it? (this will usually not show on dip stick unless you have way too much fluid in base, oil and prestone does not mix, taking drain plug off will let heavier prestone out before oil)
Let your engine settle before taking plug out

engine that burns prestone will smoke white and will wash inside of combustion chamber so no carbon will be left on those valves or sparkplugs, they (spark plugs) will usually be clean as new.
NOTE: this is not a good engine cleaning proceedure and will damage engine parts... (felt necessary to precise) lol

An engine with a blown gasket could compress into the water sleeves thus blowing air trough the radiator. If you take the radiator cap off, does it seem to want to boil over even if very cold or does it overflows out of the rad?

I doubt very much that your engine head would be cracked unless it overheated for a long period, I don't think the 2,7 has problems with heads.

If you don't have any of these symptoms, I would say you don't have a blown gasket (on the truck anyways... hahaha)

You could have injection trouble, bad air/gas mixture, coil pack, O2 sensor out of specs ect...

make pre mentioned verifications and come back with more info.

 

I can't say anything that roadkill didn't, good luck.

 

RoadKill, it was smoking white! it would idle sluggish, and still was sluggish till bout 2,500rpm, but when you revved it white smoke came out of the exhaust, I checked my oil, it was a dark chocolate brown (thats only way i can describe it lol), but i didnt see anything weird with it, but it was white smoking pretty good

 

x2 head gasket, cyl head should be ok if it hasn't overheated

 

with what you described......im with chris and roadkill on this one........have it checked, or if you can do the head gasket change yourself......it'll save ya some money. but you will definitely need to make sure that your cylinders are ok. then you'll need to change the oil and flush the coolant, at least i would anyway!! hope it all goes well man!

 

yes indeed, changing it yourself would save you lots, make sure you clean and check markings on cam and crankshaft before you take the timming belt off, maybe change it while there.
If you are not familliar to changing head gaskets, you may use masking tape on hoses, electricals and vacuums to identify where they go.
Take your time, give yourself a whole day to do the job and don't stress yourself. We can monitor your progress too if you keep us posted.
Anybody can scan a shop manual for him?

 

well i figured it was a head gasket, so i already flushed my radiator out, and i tried to work with the head gasket, and it wasnt working out, so my dad told me to jus go ahead and have someone else do it, that he didnt care, because yesterday i had jus changed my alternator, and today i flushed the radiator and replaced the spark plugs, so he wanted me to take it toyota to see if they can replace the head gasket and find out if theirs anything else wrong with it, its weird that my alternator went out saturday then saturday night my truck starts acting sluggish, then on sunday it only got worse. But Toyota has my truck right now, (which I'm not too happy with) because if I or someone else that I know isn't working on it, I dont like it...strangers working on my truck is out of my comfort zone...

 

well, hopefully you get it back and it'll be right!!

 

hey that's true, worst is that I had one until last winter hahaha

Ok then 97YoterS, buying peace of mind is sometimes cheaper

 

i'll keep u guys posted, but I'm hoping that Toyota will be done with it b4 wednesday, I got to head down to South Carolina for work, and make sum money! and the boss told me if i'm not down there by wednesday that the job will be given to someone else! so I really need my truck and this job lol!

 

where at in sc?? if its close enough....maybe we can get a beer!!!

 

ah, Greenville, SC...anyway, Toyota called me this morning telling me how much it was goin to cost, its goin to be $1,095.23.....$@#%$%!!!! but whatever i guess if it gets fixed than it'll be worth it....i guess.........

 

ah, well......maybe next time!! and thats pretty expensive, but thats about normal for the stealership...........hopefully, they do a good job on it!!

 

stealership...thats so true lol

 

ya gotta call it like ya see it bro!!!