What have you done to your Tacoma today? 1st Gen Edition

Lions weren’t very active last night, but here’s some poser pics

 

Okay guys, because of my wobbling crank I’ve been looking for used motors to swap in. What’s a good price?

I put a deposit on a 5VZ for a $600 motor 2.5 hours away. Went to pic it up and here’s what I ran into. All the components were sold on it, and I was told originally no core charge and now they want a core. So I’m looking at $700 for a motor with no components, that looks like it has felpro (blue) head gaskets and they said it has 120k miles on it. They said it runs and drives truck hit a school bus but toataled it. The blue head gasket thing freaks me out a little and I’m pissed all the components were sold. I needed a electronic throttle body too and I was originally told it came with it.

What would you guys do?

 

LKQ or car-part

 

Finally got around to starting to neaten up the rat's nest of wiring that has grown around my battery.


Then changed out the old, cracked, leaky windshield washer reservoir for the one talked about in this thread with the bonus of that black plastic lining that annoyingly rubbed my right front 33" tire at full lock is now gone.


Now just need to figure out some elegant way to plug up the hole where the old reservoir's neck popped up in front of the airbox. Any suggestions are welcome.


Happy day after.

 

I found this on car part. And LKQ has the highest prices....he’ll, LKQ might even pull all the components off as well so I could order one that twice as expensive and get the same damn thing.

I’m just curious, does anyone else see some of the head gaskets stick out that are blue? I’ve never noticed on mine.

 

I dropped the AGM battery off at Interstate. It seemed like once it got cold out it would go dead every few days if the truck sat. It failed the load test while they had it, but they still want to charge it up and test it again. It did this last winter. It was totally fine during the summer.

 

Stockers aren't blue, not even sure what part of them you could see when assembled but they're usually greyish black and have some silver areas where the metal holds them together

 

I wouldn't buy anything with swapped head gaskets. There's no way of knowing how hot or how long someone drove with blown gaskets. For all you know it was overheating again before the driver said fuck this truck and crashed it.

Maybe it's just me, but I rather buy from LQK vs some mom and pop shop. I've bought stuff from LQK and I don't remember any of the engines having been pulled down to just long blocks

 

Yeah I guess so. I was told it was the school buses fault as the truck was bought from the county but the head gasket thing is not good. Especially for a supposedly low mileage motor.

Anybody have any experience with JDM motors? Bad idea as well?

 

It was weird. A good bit of the gasket stuck out around the corners. And the blue part was kind of peeling off I think.

 

We aren't talking about valve cover gaskets right? Cause those can much more commonly be found in blue. Fel-Pro makes some decent gaskets but headgaskets have always retained the FailPro name for a reason, I wouldn't bother with anything but OEM head gaskets on a Toyota for reliable use.

 

It was the heads for sure. I’ve used the valve cover gaskets before.

 

Man, Trail Gear is buying out every one lol. Pretty soon it'll just be them and 4WP (kidding)

 

4WP thankfully is just a front man that can half competently install a basic lift on a brand new Jeep and balance half of a tire. Otherwise they're just expensive Amazon for other brands.

 

yeah I don't rely on them for much of anything even though we have 3 of them within an hour's drive from me. Sometimes they are the cheapest place to order from, though. Since they're so big they do a lot of promos and free shipping of course. I did get my Dakars through them earlier this year for less than anyone else was offering.

I would never let them physically touch my truck though

 

So I figured out one of the two rear end issues I've been having...the loud metal on metal clank has something to do with my t-case skid, it's either making contact with the t-case or I need to inspect the mounting bolts and make sure they're holding tight. Either way, taking that off solved that problem.

The "pop/pop/pop" I'm getting from the rear/passenger is still there though. Gonna check the leaf springs for umpteenth time because it sounds like the same noise I was getting back when I over-tightened the 12mm bolts on either side of the center pin on the leaf packs

 

Time for some poly engine and trans mounts

 

you think that popping could be the mounts? I was wondering about the body mount/bushings because it got way worse after Pismo...and the truck got shaken around like crazy out there driving on bumpy sand at speed

 

I just figure if your drivetrain is like mine was, things move a lot as the truck bounces. Enough that a skid with close tolerances would probably kiss a bouncing tcase. Body mounts shouldn't affect your tcase to skidplate clearance at all, if they do you have the worst skidplate ever dreamt up. Body mounts do go bad and you'd probably enjoy new ones but I think its your engine and trans mounts that are at fault here. I'd say just a poly trans mount will fix the issue but if you do one you should do the others to avoid transferring all the load to the stiffest bushing and breaking it or the thing it's bolted too.

 

Good to know thanks, I'll look into them