Won't start in cold .

Great to hear

 

I believe the 2009 still had a maintenance interval of 30k miles (48km) for plugs so definitely start there when you get a chance. Either have a mechanic or buddy help you out on those given your a situation. From there if you truly want to identify the problem tackle each thing separately. I noticed you did the block heater and fuel anti freeze and new fuel at the same time. So isolate the issue by not heating the black now that the tank has the anti freeze stuff in there and see how the truck behaves. If it doesn't act up then you know for sure its the fuel freezing up at that temp. If it does then move onto to something else. I would try and keep with you the solution to each problem with, block heater, more anti freeze etc... Condensation can form inside the tank from the water vapor so it's possible that in those temps it is settling at the bottom and freezing. Not a super likely thing because I feel we would see more people with this issues on a multitude of vehicles but there is a chance. I know me personally if I have a random issue like that and it fixes but without me knowing the exact problem I go crazy. In my mind I have to know what the actual problem was. Just a quark of mine.

 

Once upon a lifetime ago, when cars had carbs, distributors, points, condensers.........every fall around Sept/Oct the car would get complete maintenance with a tune up.

This was pretty involved. Air filter, carb cleaned, points/condenser/plugs/distributor replaced, fuel filter change, TIMING set, oil/filter change to winter viscosity, coolant checked for freeze point, battery tested/checked, winter tires put on the rear wheels, emergency road kit checked/refreshed loaded into the car, shovel and sand in the trunk, a can of ether.......... Then when the -25F or below, a prayer was said before starting...."Please, please, oh please start.", push the gas pedal to the floor 2X, turn key. Hope for a start.

My point is vehicles need to be maintained and tuned up for harsh weather. The more extreme the weather, then the more thorough the maintenance.

Today's cars are very forgiving in cold start conditions with poor maintenance. All due to the hard work of engineers and designers of today's vehicles. Imagine, trying to sell a car with 60-70's engine technology in today's market.

The OP's truck sounds like it is in the category of needing catch-up maintenance and thorough maintenance each fall. The temperatures the OP experiences are extreme, but the truck will consistently start with consistent maintenance.

IMHO, sparkplugs are cheap and easy to replace. If I were in similar situation, I may change plugs each year while doing the yearly tune-up.

 

I remember those days.

 

This is a problem that's gotten progressively worse over the past 5 years. My remote start doesn't help any. Installed last winter, it only cranks the engine over 3 revolutions and stops. 3 revs isn't enough to start it unless it's warmer than -20. So it's sequence causes it to try it 3 times before it says fail. I think it floods the truck. Then when I go to start it manually it coughs and sputters but has always eventually started till now. It took me some time to figure this out, since I always start the truck from 20 minutes down the road because it's a cellular starter. And usually I only start the truck with it 2 times a month, after I've been working for 7 days. Now because of covid I'm driving all the way up to the remote site and driving back and fourth to the work camp a few times through the week.

Anyway I have my work cut out for me. The fuel pump and it's filter are old and probably dirty. The injectors are probably dirty. The spark plugs are kind of old, although on vehicles like my chev cargo van that have gone 300,000km in these same conditions on the factory plugs 50% of that idling, I've got to wonder why the tacoma would need them every 50,000km? I'll have to suck it up and do the 1 handed repairs this week when I get home. But then it'll probably warm up to -5 for the rest of the winter so I'll never know if it helped lol.

 

That’s the piece of the puzzle I was looking for.

 

Agreed.
Starting problems of this type don't just suddenly happen. Always a slow progression.

 

It's the last night shift and more of my coworkers had car problems. One of them had both front tires come right off the bead when he started driving it. So I spent 2 hours helping him get the tires back on, since I'm the only one that's done that sort of thing before. This kind of cold will crush you in any way it can.

Stay warm people.

Cheers.

 

That cold everything, seats, steering wheel, and what else has to be as hard as a rock. Nothing like getting into a vehicle and sitting on a rock hard seat, grabbing a rock hard steering wheel and hoping it starts no matter what kind of condition it's in.

 

Hope you get things repaired

I do wish it would warm up

I Hate The Cold

 

That’s got to be hard living in the great white north

 

I wouldn't say hard referring to climate

Being in Calgary we get Chinooks and it can get quite warm in the winter months. Just don't like the very cold periods we can get

Me being born back when the earth's crust was still cooling has an effect on my cold weather tolerance

 

Where ever the OP is doesn’t sound like it might be a tad bit chilly in comparison. I know some of those inland places can get brutal for a good stretch.

 

We're are just coming out of a two week cold snap

It's time like these you hunker down and pray for summer to come

 

Send those chinooks to the other 99.9% of the country would ya?

I did some stuff...



Now I just have to wait 345 days to see if it helped. Almost March now, not cold enough to know if these items helped. But I'm not complaining.

Cheers everyone who stopped in for a visit.

 

Yikes!! I'm no rocket sturgeon, but I guarantee you that your work helped here. No wonder your truck wasn't starting in extreme temps. Strong work.

 

It is a wonder that fker would start in warm weather looking at those plug gaps and that MAF.

Jeebus.

 

So you want to take your truck off road you say??


Honestly no perceptible difference in the truck after doing this. Even in -20. I think the maintenance some people do is insane. It's a detuned Toyota engine, not a race day Ducati. One of my old 5vz 4 runners had about 1/8" of mud on top of the pistons and ran just like every other 4 runner I've driven, for 8 years that I owned it and I still see it occasionally roll through town to this day. You can't do much to slow them down, and you can't do much to speed them up lol . But I love em.

 

On a side note those plugs were a bitch to pull out. I thought I was going to break a couple of them. I guess anti seize was not the way to go? I read that Denso plugs come with a coating on the thread that prevents seizing and so anti seize isn't required. I found dry red powder in the threads of the old spark plugs. They came up hard all the way out as if they were cross threaded. They definately were not cross threaded. New ones went in easy as you'd expect. I might replace them sooner next time just to avoid the possibility of breaking one.

 

Red powder, some kind of anti seize? I used to see vehicles fresh from the factory, they’d put a big gob of this light red paste on one lug nut stud per wheel, the rest had nothing.