SOLVED! Post 2853 Leaking Injectors, Dealer Techs Rock! Extended Cranking after Engine Swap 3.4L 5vz

Wow, you even did tiny little font to remind me that you don't make this stuff up, I'm impressed! BUT, you are just some guy on the internet so maybe you do just make this stuff up? So crossing the VSV FPR thing off the list of suspects. Will look again at our FSM (or what I hope is actually our FSM) on this EGR business...

This "assembly" thing sounds more and more like the next logical thing to look at, thanks guys!

Yes, knock on everything in sight. Get out your carpentry tools and build a house. C'mon injectors!!!

EDIT, just for DP's enjoyment: Just reread your post, and now I'm seeing that you aren't just being funny, you are actually saying you're not making it up that we have no EGR. Good. That's one less thing to worry about replacing. Thanks DP!

 

Eye yey yey, the waiting game sucks. There, I stated the obvious. It's just no one else is allowed to.

Hmm, rethinking this post. Hoping everyone finds it as humorous as me and sees that I'm ripping on myself.

Also rethinking the whole 5 o'clock rule. A nice big glass of wine would go quite nicely with the waiting game.

DP, all of your little tasks you assigned me this afternoon of stuff to look up in FSM really did the trick.....you fooled me into making the agonizing waiting time go by a little faster, and forced me to become quicker at finding the files I'm looking for in that massive set of info. Good one!

Anybody else got stuff they need to know from my FSM? I'm getting pretty quick on the draw at finding these files guys......

Good grief, my phone just rang and I about hit the roof jumping out of my chair. It was just the hubby, darn him. I answered the phone, "ARGH, WHY AREN'T YOU ________?!??!" Guess I need to work on my "see you soon, honey" skills......

 

I'll put up my dissertation on injector maintenance tomorrow morning.

 

Damn! This would give me something to savor and dissect RIGHT NOW DP! C'mon, you don't really need to make time to eat dinner, do ya? Great, back to the waiting game.......

I know hubby won't let me call the mechanic, and he'll be home any minute. Guys, whaddya think, should I sneak in a call before he arrives? Or will the mechanic do this and send me packing with my sad little hard warm starts Taco?

Yep, better not risk it......

 

He got the injectors in, and has started it twice since, and.........

IT STARTED RIGHT UP BOTH TIMES!!!!!

OK, the plan was to be only cautiously hopeful, but it's pretty much impossible to not be excited right now.

He said he just shut it off at 5:15, and wants to restart it at 6:15. I was confused, as the hard starts are always at 30 min, which he knows. But before I could even say anything, he said he's noticed that since swapping the pump, the worst starts are at 1 hour rather than 30 min. No idea what that means, although I suppose it makes me feel even less like the pump might have been unnecessary.

He wants to keep it overnight, and drive it some tomorrow, and do some more starts with it in various conditions before giving it back. He thought he'd call in the afternoon to let us know.......

He also said he tightened up the new belts for us - he is such an angel! Those engine guys put in a new power steering pump and new drive belts (by the way, when we asked what brand the pump was, the answer was, "I don't remember" - nice, huh?). Anyway, the night we drove it to our new mechanic's house, we heard a terrible loud squealing when we first started driving, that went on for a few blocks. Thinking, oh great, what is THIS new problem, we told our new mechanic about the noise. He immediately said, "if they put new belts in, they're supposed to be adjusted a few hundred miles after, didn't they tell you that?" Nope. Thanks again engine guys.

Trying really really really hard not to flip out with excitement. The waiting game continues. Tune in tomorrow TW, cuz now it's time to refill that jug (err, I mean glass) of wine and DEFINITELY NOT START CELEBRATING. Very somber mood here, no enthusiasm whatsoever. I swear.

 

That intake looks horrible. One of the most visible items after a rebuild,,or it should be. I wonder if that whole assembly was left connected and shoved up out of the way as the engine came out,,pinching the return line and cutting it. I doubt it,,but I wonder.

Correct me boys and girls, but I remember seeing something about California regs and automatics,,when dealing with that regulator/VSV/EGR setup, where some have it and some don't. Still looking for that, but if someone can verify.

I don't remember anything about cranking "hard" per say,,just a finicky hot start. Good rpms with the starter motor,,just no fire immediately.

It did start fine a few times when hot as was posted,,just not like it should have.

Hope he has got it now.

Last 1/2 of the day was bright and sunny,,maybe that's a good sign for you jen.

 

Got to enjoy a few of the cookies! Only found 2 that were broke. I think that is an acceptable number. Ill try to snap a few pics of the cookies themselves a bit later. I was too hungry, so I went right at them!

I snapped a few screen shots with my shop cam, but I think there is too much dust on the lense to get much resolution. No biggiem they were great!

I hope these injectors were the issue. Its time to put this behind you.

KO

 

Yep, the sloppy details the engine guys left behind that our new mechanic noticed and cleaned up for us......not even going to *go there* explaining how that makes me feel, I'm sure you can all figure it out though. But the really sad part is, naturally it also makes me question whether we actually got the quality of engine that we were told we'd receive and that we paid premium price for. Not much we can do about that now either way, so I'm trying my best to push those thoughts out of my mind.....

A lot of you might remember that we looked at other long blocks for lower cost online, and also we found other mechanics who would have rebuilt our engine for less $ than the guys we picked. But we chose them because they emphasized how quality is soooooooooooooooo important to them in their work, all 3 times I called and basically interviewed him for a good 30-45 min per call. Yeah, everything about the condition we received our truck back in just screams quality, definitely. Every single time I spoke to them, before and during the time they worked on our truck, I basically begged the guy to please please please call us and let us know if you find ANYTHING you would recommend replacing as you open things up - that we would very likely say yes to whatever he'd advise - hell, I even gave him a typed notes sheet when we first took it in that stated exactly that in giant bold letters at the top! It said: "[FONT=&quot]While cost is a concern, our absolute primary concern is quality over costs/time – so if ANYTHING at all comes up that you’d recommend doing to improve longevity/reliability of Taco, please call us. We want to feel safe driving back out to remote places in our Taco again!" [/FONT]Who would be that careless and lazy about something that simple, like putting on new hoses, and cleaning things up when they're all taken apart like that? Just so disappointing. And the stripped bolt? From what our new mechanic is saying, it's not leaking so far, thank goodness. But the dishonesty about it is what really bothers me. Just be honest about it for pete's sake! We're reasonable people! Surely they must have realized we'd find out about it, considering we were basically forced to find a new mechanic to diagnose our fuel issues, so of course that mechanic is going to see it. Guess the quality thing didn't turn out quite as planned.

We also chose them over others because it would be "one stop shoppping" as opposed to most every other option. They'd be the ones building the engine, the ones to swap it, and the ones to diagnose/repair the cause of the piston hole. I remember saying to the owner as we were getting close to making our decision, "one of the main reasons we're going with you is because you are one stop shopping for us, whereas other options, like ordering a long block online and having it shipped to a local mechanic to install, we'd risk being stuck in the blame game if an issue arose - the mechanic would say the company shipped a crap engine, the engine people would say the mechanic screwed up. By going with you guys, this way we'll KNOW FOR SURE where to go and what to do if there are ANY ISSUES after the engine is put in." Hmmm. Didn't quite go as planned on that front either. I suppose I could have kept repeating a 60 mile round trip out there for a 3rd, 4th, 5th time, and heck, I guess I could have just kept on doing that forever. But on that 2nd trip, it was pretty clear that they did not have any desire to waste more of their time on diagnosing this issue, because after all, that's time they could spend taking "interview" calls from people like me, who are looking for high quality, one stop shopping and are willing to pay top dollar for it. Oh yeah, and now it looks like the issue that they threw in the towel on diagnosing is actually going to wind up being because they either didn't do a damn thing with our injectors, or at best did some seriously half assed work on them. Even if the injectors don't wind up being the cause of the hard warm starts, it seems to me we still were swindled on them, because why the heck would 2 of them "fail" just a couple of weeks and a couple hundred miles after they were *supposedly* professionally cleaned and tested? I'm no injector expert, but it just doesn't seem possible.

EDIT: As I am thinking about this more, I am realizing that until I actually talk with them directly about my concerns, its really not fair of me to make assumptions about what did or didn't happen. So, please disregard the assumptions I made in this post.

PS: Mod, I like your thinking about the sunshine yesterday. I was thinking that too.....

 

I've skipped several pages here, this thread got LONG but it looks like you had some issues. Out of curiosity, how much have you spent so far?

 

The first rule about how much money we spend on repairs...We don't talk about how much money we spend on repairs

Seriously, tho, any updates?

 

lets just say more then she wanted to but thats not a topic open for discussion anymore

 

warning !!! jen please cover your eyes and do not read this post. you dont need more to worry about.

im wondering, from the sounds of what her new mechanic found, if this wasnt a hack rebuild and they just rolled the engine over and pulled the crank and replaced the piston from the bottom end and never even took the top end apart except to disconnect things to pull the engine? a lot of money can be saved buy not removing the heads and having them done but charging the customer to do it anyway. we shouldnt judge others without knowing but the red flags with this guy are turning into a fireworks show. i dont knw if jen ever mentioned if her new mechanic checked the valves to see if they were done correctly or even at all.

 

Well "oregon taco 2", hope this is the day.

As for the care and feeding of my injectors for the last nearly quarter million miles, here goes.
I feel the single most important thing is the long term use of "Top Tier" gas. Gas is pretty much gas until the addition of TT additive packages. For the most part this is what separates Top Tier from "bastard gas". These companies also tend to have better maintenance practices just due to their size compared to the mom and pop type stations.
Sometimes this is not practical. The key here is "long term". Outside of just flat contamination, a tank or two of bastard gas here and there is not going to hurt anything.

For the first 50K miles I burned convenience store bastard gas without any issue and never added any cleaners. I logged every gallon and every mile. Mileage and performance was consistent. Then out of the blue I got a lean code. This was cured "just like that" by running the tank down to around 2 or 3 gallons and adding 4 cans of

$25 BG44k BG 44K Fuel System Cleaner Power Enhancer 11oz.

BG44k. This was followed by 15-20 minutes cruising the hood in lower gears at 2-4K RPM, up and down, up and down (with a can of extra fuel in case). Cleared the code, started using TT fuel and had no more issues. This was the only code ever set on this truck. I do toss in a can of BG44K once a year or so, if I remember. Mostly a mental satisfaction thing. My injectors have never been out and I successfully repeated this "fix" on a friends truck in the exact same situation.
Why BG44K? No other reason than because it is approved by Toyota and it's what Gadget uses. This stuff costs about twice as much as other cleaners. Is it twice as good? Probably not, but the use is so infrequent the extra cost is minimal in the long run.
The above process mimics the best professional "in situ" injector cleaning systems. These bypass the vehicles fuel pump and run the engine off a small tank of high % cleaner and gas. Of course this is not as good as a full remove and pro clean/test but it's quick and easy.
All so called fuel system cleaning done by introducing a cleaner into the intake through a vacuum line do little or nothing for injectors proper.

 

Uh oh, DP busted me. Yes, I admit it, I'm officially a Toyota forum addict. I am not solely loyal to TW, although it definitely is by far my favorite.

I saw all of your comments this morning, and was about to post this super long novel explaining all the thoughts rambling around in my head, then I stopped. It occurred to me that the stuff I was writing was probably best shared after today, once we have absolutely positively wrapped up all of the repair mode stuff. So, I will actually be answering Indy's question (full disclosure style even), and responding to Keakar's concern about the engine, and sharing a bunch of stuff about how we feel about the whole enchilada start to finish. As I've said all along, a huge reason I keep being so transparent on this thread every step of the way is in hopes that some other poor soul who is faced with the same miserable news of engine failure might benefit from seeing exactly what we went through, what options we considered and our perspective of their pros and cons, and why we made the decisions we made - all of it, the good, the bad, all of it. But now is not the time to make that post. But get ready for a loooooooooooong post whenever this all concludes, it's coming.

Only thing that matters today is keeping myself busy until the man that very well may have saved our Taco from a funeral calls.

DP, thank you for sharing your injector maintenance protocol. Very informative and much appreciated insight. Will review it with hubby and will likely ask you a few specifics to be sure we understand all of the exact details. Thanks again.

Sorry TW, the waiting game continues! I promise I will share as soon as I know though. Cross those fingers and toes everyone, for the 87th time!

 

What Dirty pool says is the truth,,,, I'm personally a fan of the BG products, I use the MOA with the oil changes,,, CF5 for fuel protection every oil change also,,, I'll use the

$25 BG44K BG 44K Fuel System Cleaner Power Enhancer 11oz.

BG44K about every 15,000 miles for cleaning up the fuel system.

I use the BG automatic trans flush to on my diesel truck, got in under the 36,000 mile mark on the odometer so their warranty will cover for the life of the truck.

 

Alright, thanks for the input! 2 votes for this protocol, I like it! Thanks

 

Mod, the sun is shining crazy bright today here too. Is it up your way?

 

Also, anyone have any theories as to why this:

Our mechanic said he's noticed that since swapping the pump, the worst starts are at 1 hour rather than 30 min.

Seems like maybe we did need the pump after all if it changed something, but curious as to what it means exactly......

Also, I'm still confused as to how exactly the FPR works in relation with the pump and the injectors. I always thought the pump provided a constant supply of fuel to the regulator, then the regulator sort of worked like a roller coaster that's coming to a stop - meaning, the fuel keeps zipping into it from the pump, the way a roller coaster would zip into its stopping point at the end of the ride, then the FPR rationed out the appropriate amount of fuel to each injector through the fuel rails.

But I coulda swore DP and Bama posted some things yesterday or day before that made it sound different from that. That they were saying the fuel goes straight from the pump to the injectors, then the FPR's purpose is to take up the excess from the injectors that they don't need, then the FPR sends that extra back to the tank. Maybe I misread what they said, I should go back and review it again.....

OK, Bama said this and I know it has something to do with it, but still confused - "the 1st gen has the FPR dump fuel rail pressure rather than limit fuel rail pressure."

Yep, just reviewed, but still confused. I did find where Bama said:

"I would suspect that a new fuel pump will have taken care of the fuel SUPPLY issue." Maybe that's why the bad starts went from 30 min to 1 hour? Still not crystal clear in my mind though....

 

if it takes twice as long to show up now then maybe the leak was only reduced by half?

could be the injectors are fixed and now the fpr isnst holding the new "now increased" fuel pressure. more pressure can find a small leak that wasnt there with less pressure

just guessing here, but its the first thing that comes to mind

then again the fuel pressure and supply issue might be fixed and now its a vapor lock thing after it cools down

i say making brownies will fix this problem

 

wait, what do you mean "maybe the leak was only reduced by half"?

he was saying the hard start timing changed to 1 hour (as opposed to 30 min) after the new pump was in but before the injectors were taken out and dealt with

i think you're thinking i meant we're still having hard warm starts even after he got the freshly addressed injectors back in, but that's not what i meant - he was saying after he got the pump in and before he pulled the injectors, he noticed the change from 30 min to 1 hr

as of this moment, still waiting to hear whether any hard warm starts since injectors went back in. last night he said he'd tried it twice and so far so good.....