Rod knocking after pulling trailer up steep hill

Here's the vacuum at idle. This truck was manufactured after the recall, so no dice there.

Is the o-ring some special Toyota o-ring or do we just grab one out of the box of o-rings I have sitting around?

 

You should have at least 26.6 in. Hg. Definitely the pump does not produce enough.
Not sure about o rings. Try to see if it fixes the issue.
But if the oil made inside the pump, need to replace

 

I think this product is supposed to help with oil starvation when going up steep hills. He restocks fairly regulary, so keep an eye out. He will usually post on instagram when he restocks.
https://rmengineeringoffroad.com/products/16-23-tacoma-pcv-reroute-kit

 

Non sequitur? GTFO.

 

Motor runs. Brakes work after replacing o-ring. And then the transmission started leaking around the torque converter. You can't make this up.

 

Any chances of damaged cooling lines?

 

Doesn't look like it. Oil dripping directly out of bellhousing bottom straight below torque converter. Only thing in there is the oil pump seal. We never took the torque converter out, only think I can think is a little bit of rust got in there from sitting and took out seal.

Drove about 5 miles to gas station to top off tank with clear gas to counteract old gas half tank. That improved idle and power, but got back to shop and leaking tranny fluid on floor.

I can't see how engine issues would affect that seal. Engine never got hot, neither did tranny. Only thing I can think is pulling tranny and replacing seal, maybe looking for play in oil pump input. Fluid looked great when we checked it last. Tranny shifts perfectly.

 

Oh, another note: Whoever screwed with the newer vacuum pump must've tried to make it work for a non-vacuum motor, looks like they welded the end of it shut and put it back in there. My old one was in much better shape and was unmolested. O-ring fixed vacuum and brakes work fine now, as does engine.

 

I think there is a lesson for everyone if buying used engines. Gotta check everything before sticking it in.
Congrats on getting the engine working. That reluctor was a root cause of the all you problems. All other problems are related to circuitry are normal part of course. When I did my I4 engine, I think I missed a few connectors as well. And it has 3x less connectors/sensors.
Good thing you got a scanner.

 

I try to imagine how someone didn't get the reluctor aligned with the totally obvious alignment pin. I'll bet they screwed with a ton of other stuff like messing up the vacuum pump and screwing up the timing chain too, but it could've never run right with those things wrong, even though they were trying to get the vacuum thing sorted out, which wouldn't have worked I think since they had a non-vacuum motor.

If you get one of these motors, swap the sensors you know are good to whatever you had. They just have to change one or two little things on the sensors to make them not work even if they look identical.

My friend says he swaps cam and crank sensors every time when he gets a donor motor, now I know why!

 

Did you jack the tranny to get the vacuum pump out?

 

OP, you have the patience of Job. As much as you have been through I know you will work out this last issue with the transmission leak.

What a journey, Congratulations!

 

Thanks for the entertaining and informative thread. I have had no input worth giving but I have enjoyed reading every post. I’m glad you got things figured out and the truck is back to life. Tacoma family for the win!

 

Didn’t you buy this engine from a TW guy? Pretty lousy not to disclose all the fuckery that was attempted on that poor motor. Glad you got it sorted and great job!

 

The seller may not have known what the shop mechanic did.

 

I thought the seller WAS the mechanic, but maybe I’m mixing up threads or misremembering. I’m not going back to look for it, so you make a good point

 

The seller and his Toyota dealer worked on it www.tacomaworld.com/threads/fs-complete-2gr-v6-engine-pnw.810636/

 

agreed, not ideal to get a engine that had been deemed unable to work in a vehicle after 2 different people tried switching out different parts to make it work. Had it come straight out of a wreck and given to the OP this might be a much shorter thread.

 

Part of that seems to be using the harness on the engine. Unless there are differences I’m not aware of, I would have reused my own engine harness. Chasing harness issues on a used engine is not ideal at all.

OP has tons of patience and I respect that. I would have thrown in the towel and sourced yet another engine long ago most likely. But I also don’t have multiple vehicles to drive, just my Jeep and it isn’t driving currently either so it would be a big deal to be down.

 

I believe toyota tech did not put alot of effort to diagnose the issue.

I suppose bank 1 intake cam phasing could've being affected by the vaccum pump delete on vaccum boost cam, but OP had codes on both banks. They could've eliminated the timing issue (which was obvious) by running oscilloscope on the crankshaft and cam sensors.
Would be nice to see toyota techs live data.