Stranded this morning

Watching for update

 

This happens much too often for the most popular mid size truck on the planet. There will be many more to come on this site, now that they are getting up there in mileage.

Imagine all of the blown 3.5 motors that don't get reported here on Tacomaworld. I wouldn't trust the 3.5 in the Tacoma at all, happy I sold my 18 when I did.

 

That can be said about any engine of any make and model. Mass production i still the 3.5 is a great built engine

 

Cool man. We all have our own opinions. After owning one and seeing all the failures on here, I'll continue to doubt and dislike the 3.5 in the Tacoma.

Funny thing is I would still buy an older is350 which has a similar 3.5L. That doesn't have the Atkinson style overly complicated 3.5 that is in the Tacoma today.

 

Agreed. Everybody here is quick to jump on the “there are tons of 3.5L, so overall they are good”…..while that isn’t necessarily untrue, there were also tons of 4.0Ls and they didn’t have near as many cases of repeat problems. And by repeat I mean lots of the same problem coming up across various folks (not 1 issue happening to 1 guy multiple times). The 3.5L has at least 4 of them.

The fact that the 3.5L has the cylinder imbalance codes, timing chain cover leaks, coolant crossover pipe leaks, intake manifold flap failure, and random ones grenading, is a bit concerning. I know no engine is perfect, but many other engines don’t have recurrent, persistent issues that plague numerous trucks.

I would bet this engine has a significantly higher failure rate than the 4.0L, but of course none of us can prove that right or wrong. and by significant I don’t mean 10% vs 0.1%, I mean like 0.1% vs 1%, or something like that. There are still not “many” failures overall, but it feels like there are more than there should be.

 

I believe that sounds right about the higher rate etc if you factor in all the major issues like the chain leaks that don't necessarily mean a blown engine but are earlier than usual and extremely costly.

 

Oh yeah, forgot I had replaced those stabilizer bar links...the salt ate them away after a couple of years. They were fairly expensive. Funny thing in all the following years I had the truck those replacement links never rotted out again. I replaced the front struts to with a set of Monroes.

 

Pushing this to the top hoping the OP will keep us updated

 

Cars in the 70's~80's lucky to get 40k out of 'em....
Buying anything used with over 35k was like playing russian roulette with 5 rounds.

 

Well that's a little exaggerated. You learn to drive in those years and broke a lot of cars?

 

I am only 25 so I have no first hand experience with this but I know all the older guys at the shops I worked at would say similar as in older vehicles would spin bearing, eat a cam, otherwise just have a total failure with seemingly no warning compared to now as quality control, technology, manufacturing tolerances, etc all got better, yes these things still happen example being I had a 21 blazer come through my shop with 37kms that spun a bearing for one of the rods... these failures are far less common and vehicles are alot less trouble prone. Even for things that aren't say damaging but an inconvience. Like carbs icing up for say

 

Yes, **it happens. And are you saying that "older guys at the shops", the ones that saw all the anomalies and fixed them, are the best source of information about vehicle failures?

We used to sell rebuilt engines and put the returned cores in circle track cars and run them until they broke. Most of those cores had 150K on them and they ran hard and won races. People with money built their engines and broke them... and sometimes came in second.

 

I drove 'em - yea I'm that old - and trust me when I say they stank. Radiators, water pumps, belts, hoses, eating oil, leaking oil, brake issues,
starter issues, radio's that didn't work, heater core issues, a/c issues, you name it. Nothing like the quality you see today. People go on and on
about 'quality' issues with new cars these days, they just never had to drive the clunkers we did.

 

Yup, quality control suffered but hard parts in the drivetrains did better than components. It wasn't unusual to see vehicles ready for the junkyard due to interiors, dashes, paint, etc., with well over a hundred K on the engines and trans. Some better, some not so much. We get more today...

 

I owned a 1963 327 impala that had nearly 95k miles that still ran well using about a qt every 3k oil change. Love that car till the frame totally rotted away causing the car to buckle in half.
I bought a used 1966 gto with 70k miles that rain pretty decent still. Having the bug to drag race it, I totally went through gutting the car, installing a rebuilt 421 nascar super duty engine with dual 500 cfm carbs, along with a close ratio 4 speed, and 4.56 gears. It was one hell of a 12 sec. street car I could drive to the 1/4 mile strip, and drive back home.

 

I'm not claiming them to be stats Canada by no means but when you see the technology change through the years and have been repairing them too, you tend to get a reasonable outlook on things and whether things have gotten better or worse. Especially seeing how I would bet there are far more vehicles on the road today than before and alot more of prior generations than before and with much more miles than before

 

My 70's and 80's vehicles were not too bad, last one was a 1988 VW Golf that l bought new. Had for 11 years and just under 200K before a Crown Vic plowed into me and fled the scene, car was still in great mechanical shape at the time and am confident it would have made it past 300K.

 

Must be talking domestics. I've had ridiculously good reliability from the 80s cars from Japan.

 

Even though my car is a 1992, the chassis was designed in the 1970's and the drivetrain in the 1980's, been driving it aggressively for 25 years and all is good.

 

Come on brother!