2001 2.7L 4WD Engine stops suddenly

I have a 2001 extended cab 4wd 2.7l with 246,000 miles. Over the last 2 weeks it has stopped 4 times while I was driving and it is currently at the dealer. I used my last AAA tow to get it to the dealer today.

By "stopped on the freeway" I mean the damn engine just stops with no warning.

1. Stopped on freeway entrance ramp. Battery was dead. Had it towed to Pep Boys, alternator later tested good and battery bad, replaced battery. The new battery has really been traumatized throughout this while trying to start the unstartable and has held up well. It is a Bosch. Truck ran strong for a day.

2. Stopped on freeway. Got it towed home. Cleaned MAF and IAC. Ran strong for 5 days until number 3 below. I really thought I had it fixed here.

3. Stopped on the freeway, had it towed home, replaced fuel pump. Ran strong for about 15 miles.

4. Stopped on the freeway, upon advice of a friend who is a professional mechanic, I had it towed to the dealership for diagnosis. Dealer was unable to definitively diagnose. They cleared the current codes and then ran the motor. It threw P1300, P1305, P1310 etc codes for every cylinder which means igniter circuit malfunction on all four cylinders. The dealer is unable to tell me whether the plugs fired or whether there was no fuel to the cylinders. The dealer recommended replacing all four igniters which I think means the individual coils for each cylinder. This is expensive and strikes me as monetarily oriented. It may be that during the mucking around in the engine that whatever is really wrong might get inadvertently fixed so they'd look like heroes.

I didn't buy the concept of 4 concurrent coil failures particularly since the engine will start and run now(until it stops). A few times after the sudden shut offs, I was able to to restart right away or after 10 minutes or so.

During the recent visit to the dealer the following were tested: fuel pump, fuel pressure, alternator, MAF. Seems to me that something upstream of the coils must be the culprit.

Does anyone have any ideas? Your help would be appreciated.

 

Read down to post #8. He no longer has a pic, but see if you can find this plug.

http://www.yotatech.com/f2/help-please-p1300-code-dead-truck-164376/

 

More:

http://www.customtacos.com/forum/showthread.php?t=136317&page=2

 

Thanks for the help.

Sounds like a serious inspection of the wiring from the ecu to the individual igniters should find it. The auto cutoff of the fuel explains the behavior I've seen.

Also if one cylinder goes out first, the engine may stumble when coasting(slowing down in gear) . This would be followed by a complete shutdown of the engine.

 

I would check the plug that goes into the coil packs first.

 

The engine would abruptly stop anytime, anywhere.

The error codes indicated failure to fire on all 4 cylinders.

The dealer proposed changing all 4 coils. After reading the responses to my post, I convinced the dealer that that wasn't a reasonable diagnosis. I asked a local Toyota master mechanic to look at the truck and he made the same diagnosis and recommendations as the dealer.

To the dealer's credit, they dug in and ultimately found the error, which was a failing burglar alarm putting the engine in fail-safe mode in which the engine thinks it's been in a crash and cuts off the fuel flow to all cylinders. The scanner was not much use diagnosing something hairy like this.

The service manager told me that when the burglar alarm was installed in 2002, that was the standard way alarms disabled vehicles, however that method is no longer used.

I think the dealer spent about 12 man hours on this but only charged me the minimum(3) that I agreed to when I signed the service order.

1. The help I received here on the Forum enabled the repair since it put the dealer on the right track. I would not have found it myself.
2. I now trust the service department quite a bit.
3. Toyota Carlsbad is very good overall and when Toyota imports a 4 door Hilux, I'm going to buy it there.

Thanks for the help!!!