Easiest intake camshaft removal procedure?

Hey, everyone, I recently picked up a 1996 Tacoma 3.4L and have been chasing down the last engine code for the past few weeks. I finally figured out that the P0303 I was getting was because the intake valves on cylinder 3 were so out of spec that they weren't even closing.

So, I did a clearance check and started removing the valve shims to be machined down to spec. In doing so, I cracked the lip of one of the buckets/lifters on that cylinder... on the intake side of course.

I really don't want to dig deeper than I have to, so I was wondering what the easiest procedure for removing the cams is. Do I really have to remove the crank pulley, or can I somehow get to the timing belt tensioner to drop tension and then just clip the belt near the top and on the other cam pulley while I remove just the passenger side pulley?

Thank you guys in advance! I have been searching around and can't really find a good answer to this.

 

Put the engine at TDC and remove the belt tensioner. Belt will be loose and you can remove the cam.

 

Awesome! Thank you for your response. With regards to reassembly, do I have to compress and "grenade pin" the tensioner or will I be able to push it back in and bolt it in by hand?

 

You will have to re-pin it.
You may slide by with this procedure but after all this work do you really want to chance a mis timed engine just to keep from pulling the harmonic balancer?
That's cake compared to the cams.

Good luck with your shim fix. So I guess you had .000 clearance on some? How do you know how much to have machined off to make it in spec.? I mean you couldn't have measured how much the vlave was open and added that amount could you?

 

It's more the steps that lead all the way to getting the crank pulley off combined with that itself. I was trying to avoid pulling everything like the radiator, fan, #1 timing cover, etc.,. Where do I run the risk of mistiming it if I keep everything taught to the crank after I remove the cam pulley?

And yeah, both intakes were at .000. I am just following what the manual says to do - cutting the clearance out of the shim itself. You are right, there is no way to know for sure, but that's another reason I decided to machine them instead of buying new ones - in case I need to re-machine those.

 

I'd find it harder to keep the belt so taught that it couldn't jump a tooth than taking it all apart. If just changing a tensioner, yea, I just did one like that, I only needed a minute. This is needing hours. I have double checked the timing prob. 3 times now as there is a vibration now (some other things happened too unrelated) and I'm pretty keen to shortcuts.

It's a strange situation to have two intakes no less and only one cylinder go out of spec. just by wear. I'd be super observant for some failure there. For sure a leak down after the work is done to complete. It's just too odd.

Not going to speculate, I don't know.

 

No, I agree. The exhaust valves on that same cylinder were very out of spec as well. I will repeat the compression and leak down tests once I finish for sure. I put a scope in the cylinder and everything looked fine both cylinder and valve/head side . Of course a crack would be a little tough to detect, but when I pull the bucket, I will look at the top of the valve stem to see if it's mushrooming. I am praying I didn't pick up a crappy truck; I was really banking on the legendary reliability of the Tacoma, but of course I have no idea how it was cared for for the first 220k.