2.7L Compression Test Numbers

Great. Thanks again for the advice.

 

You can find a replacment cast manifold pretty reasonable on ebay -I think they're about 40 bucks new free shipping.. Keaker is right about buying the newer header style from later model 3rz's if you dont want to have to ever deal with it again but a new cast one should last close to 10 years id say. Its an easy repair, I did mine in about an hour in the shop.
That crack could possibly be the noise your hearing also.
Id say sell it and buy a double cab.

 

I'd love a double cab but it's so hard to justify the cost. They actually hold their value too well sometimes. I can get a 3rd gen 4runner for about half the price. There would be a few times a year that I'd miss having a pick-up though.

Is there a gasket between the exhaust manifold and the engine?

 

Right on, 4runners are definantly nice.. Get a harbor china trailer to pull behind it and you probably wont miss having a truck....much..
yes there is a gasket if you end up buying an eBay manifold it comes with a new one. Heres a link from the place I bought mine from back in 09- I paid $57 for it back then, they came up quite a bit since

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Exhaust-Man...fits=Model:Tacoma&hash=item1e7ce12e12&vxp=mtr

 

I had a slight hairline crack in my exhaust manifold too and drove on it for about a year with no perceptible issues. A couple of weeks back, I was looking for an excuse to work on the truck so I threw on one of these Dorman pieces; Dorman 674-464:



Super easy install, only issues I had were getting some studs off the old manifold and back on the block, but the use of the 'two nut' method took care of that.

You should be able to find the Dorman kit for $90-100 shipped online. Its cheap enough that if you need to replace it in 2 years, its not a big deal.

 

I'm going to put everything back together tonight. I've been trying to think through possible reasons for the sound that I was hearing after I disassembled it to measure my valve clearance. Remember that I pulled the exhaust side cam completely out and tilted the intake side up so that I could reach the rear shim.

Is it possible that I have the cam shafts themselves installed slightly too far towards the front of the engine? Since the timing belt tensioner was putting downward force on the front of the intake cam while it was loose it may have creeped forward slightly during the process. It looks like the cam lobes aren't perfectly centered over the shims.

The timing seems to be right on thanks to the infamous zip tie and match marks on the meshing gears. I think it's almost impossible that I put it together a tooth off.

What do you guys think?

 

Im far from an expert, but in general, when I cant figure out an issue after doing a procedure, I will take everything apart in reverse and put it back to together ensuring its done the right way. That usually helps me figure out whats wrong if I dicked something up.

 

Well that's in the works. I'm really hoping to accidentally fix what I accidentally broke in the process of replacing those two valve shims tonight.

 

Valve job done. Won't start. Seems like I messed up my timing somehow.

I've done the same thing twice. Once to pull and measure the shims and once to replace them. It seems that the method I used causes the timing to be off by a little. The first time that lead to the strange sound. The second made it bad enough that it won't start.

I took every precaution to preserve the timing but it somehow got messed up any way it seems. I've got compression, spark, and fuel but it won't run.

 

my bet is you got the exhaust cam turned one notch out of place.

this is why I cautioned earlier NOT to lift out the exhaust cam but only loosen it enough to get the shim in and out.

the bad thing is now it seams you did it again so im guessing its not 2 teeth out of place.

DO NOT RUN THE ENGINE

if the cams are out then it "could" bend a valve and that's serious money and time.

I would bet the intake is still in place and its the exhaust that is off because like a distributor it turns as It goes into place and as it comes out so just like a distributor it is easy to get one tooth off or in this case maybe two, but that's just a guess.

what you need to do now is follow the factory service manual directions for setting the cam alignment and timing.

 

When I did mine, I got the timing wrong because the timing mark on the crank pulley wasn't aligned correctly any more. I ended up fouling a brand new set of plugs.

Your problem is most likely due to getting the exhaust cam lined up incorrectly with the distributor.

Here's how I set my timing:

Remove valve cover, remove spark plugs, remove distributor.

Insert a long wooden dowel in #1 plug hole until it rests on the piston and sticks up through the plug hole where you can see it. Make sure plenty sticks out - you don't want to lose this thing down your motor. I used about a 20 inch long piece of dowel.

Slowly rotate motor by hand by putting a socket on the nut on the end of the crank pulley.

Continue rotating until dowel hits highest point. I had someone else watch. You can also do it by making marks on the dowel and then rotating bit by bit. Make sure the dowel is not hung up. I found that it would sometimes stick at the high point and stay there even when I rotated the motor further.

When dowel is at highest point, check to see if timing marks on the back of the gears on the cams are aligned - two marks on one cam, one on the other, they should all be in a line pointing center.

If the dowel is at the highest point and the timing marks on the cams are not aligned, you need to rotate the motor another turn.

Once the timing marks are aligned while the dowel is at the highest point, you will need to insert the distributor in proper alignment.

Position the distributor with the rotor pointing straight up at the 12:00 position.

Push the distributor gently into place. The rotor should rotate to the right as you push, ending up pointing at the #1 terminal.

Reassemble everything.

You will probably need to put fresh spark plugs in, because trying to start the motor with the timing off will foul the plugs.

Once it's all set with new plugs, it should start and drive.

It took me a couple of tries to get this right. All of that was about 10k miles ago for me, and there doesn't appear to have been any long term damage.

 

When you said it sounded like a diesel earlier in the thread did you mean that it was ticking, knocking etc.?
usually a tooth off either way isn't enough to hurt anything
I hope for your sake you didnt bend a valve.
Is the distributor harness plugged in?
Like stated above, pull your #1 plug, line up the marks on your crank pulley and time the cam gears to their timing marks then look at the rotor and see where it's pointed.

 

well what the update?

whats going on with your engine, is it fixed now?

 

Kinda wondering myself

 

Bad news on the truck. I'll post a detailed update later tonight. Too hard to do on the phone.

 

I've been trying to figure out whether the 1995 era 2.7L engines are interference engines or not. I've done a lot of searching and have seen people adamantly saying both yes and no. Does anybody know for sure?

 

lemme guess? the ticking you were hearing was the piston hitting the valves and now you have a bent valve?

I don't know a lot about interference and non interference engine info but AFAIK it is only the v6 that is the one that bad timing wont hurt the engine on.

 

Sounds like I'm a little late to the party, but I had the same problems as you at first, I bought the Schefly (sp) valve adj. tool, the one like Toyota sales, nice tool but it doesn't work. So I found the same video you did by this guy, watched it looked easy enough, but I COULD NOT find that Honda bucket adj. tool, BUT in my search I found one made by, can't remember, but it looks almost identical, almost, it's for a Kawasaki bike valve adj.

I pulled up the video and watched it again till it got to him showing the tools he used and stopped the video, held my Kawasaki tool up to the screen and picked up the difference, memory serves me right, it has a little to steep of bend AND the bend is a little to sharp or immediate if you want to say it that way.

So, I put in my vice and fired up my oxy/acty torch,dumbass welder by trade, took some of the bend out and then took a small grinder and contoured the back side of the bend to make it more gradual radius, inside radius also, then I heat treated it again, probably didn't need it, but I did it anyways.

Ok, now I'm ready again, oh by the way, the Toyota looking pliers and stand off tool worked on a few of the valves, not many though,,,,, also 14 of my 16 valves were off, all the exh. were, one of the exh was at .003"
AND guess what, it was the very back one next to the firewall, but I was determined to get-er-done, hell I'm 67 yrs. old and can't see that well either after 47 yrs of welding.

Another thing you're right on or somebody was that posted on this thread was that the tool that you put in under the cam and set on the edge of the bucket was to "short" to hold it down and remove the shim, well mine was the same way, the one that came with my pliers that I bought, so back to the drawing board, let me back up a little, the "foot" tool that holds the bucket worked on most of them but not on all them.

This step is not hard, but what I did was take the "foot" tool that came with the set and laid it on top of an old power saw blade, like a bigger hacksaw blade, and traced around it and took my grinder and whacked it out leaving the edge that sets on the edge of the bucket about 1/16" longer to hold that bucket down in the back of the head a little farther down,,,, oh yeah, I went to harbor freight and bought their set of picks, think there's about 3 or 4 different ones in there, I know they had orange handles and cost about 4 bucks.

Now I was ready again, got in the engine compartment and got after it, it actually went fairly easy with these tools, oh, and the Kawasaki tool I bought was on ebay, for about 4 or 5 bucks.

Everything worked out fine and I was pleased, if you need anymore info let me know, there's a little info that's missing, but it's not really that important and I'm tired of typing.

 

So what happened?
Op hasnt been back since.

 

Sorry for the delay in getting back. This whole thing has been a nightmare. This is going to be a long post, I'm sorry.

When I got my shims swapped out and put everything back together, the truck didn't start. My heart sank. I figured that I had to have misaligned my cams or somehow gotten the timing off between the crank and the intake cam. Not wanting to permanently screw up my engine I decided to have it towed to the dealer to have them take a look at it. You'll remember that I'd already said that I've had problems with this dealer.

Because of the Thanksgiving holiday all of the shops were closed for quite a while. It was a full week after I initially 'broke' my truck before they even got in into the bay at the dealer. I honestly don't think that they attempted to diagnose the problem any farther than trying to start it. They never could tell me what they did to diagnose it. Ultimately they told me that they wanted $2,000 to set the timing saying that they had to almost completely disassemble the engine to do it. Since the truck is barely worth that I told them no thanks.

In the meantime I've had a sick family and a need for a running vehicle so I haven't had much time to post updates. I bought a nice used 4Runner so at least I have a running vehicle again.

Yesterday I finally had time to tear into this again. After re-reading the suggestions it seemed that the most likely cause of my problem is getting a few teeth off on my distributor as suggested by one of you guys above. I took the valve cover back off and cranked the engine until it was a TDC. When it was at TDC the reference dots on the cams lined up correctly, but the mark on the crank pulley was nowhere to be seen. I don't know if the pulley came loose and lost it's reference or if it was replaced before I owned it and installed incorrectly but there is no reference mark set for TDC.

With everything at TDC I pulled the distributor cap off and sure enough, the rotor was pointed to about the 4 o'clock position like it was trying to fire cylinder number 2 instead of one. I pulled it out, set it to 12 o'clock, slid it back in, and it rotated to roughly the number 1 position. I put it all back together cranked it up and it ran. It ran rough, but it ran.

I was so proud of myself. It was getting late so I put my tools away for the night and slept well for the first time in weeks knowing that I was likely only one or two teeth off from getting my truck running like a top again. Without a reference point on the crank pulley I knew it would be somewhat of a guessing game but I knew I was close.

Today, after church, I come home all stoked to get it running and no matter how I set the distributor it won't run for more than a few seconds. I still think that I'm close but it seems that the adjustments that I can make are just too large and I'm forced to skip over what has to be the sweet spot. Every tooth in the distributor drive gear represents about a 1/8 of a rotation for the distributor rotor.

It cranks, it sputters, it tries to run, but ultimately dies.