500 dollar junker problems. Weird gunk in throttle body. Help.

Looks to me like one cylinder somehow filled with fluid and backwashed into the intake. Pull all the plugs and see if the offending cylinder is full of the sludge-if it is and it’s been like that for years you’re screwed, but if you pour some trans fluid or diesel fuel in that hole it may free up eventually. The only real way this could happen is from a bad head gasket or cracked cylinder wall, but then somehow the coolant mixed with the oil, so the guy was driving it like that for a while. Also, the truck was backed into the spot in the photos-so it was likely towed there after it died on the road and dropped in that spot.

 

Scrap the truck and move on to something else....

 

Oh sweet Lord have mercy... This is gonna be a doozy and might make ya'll laugh and say 'THE HELL?!'.

Gonna start about 5 minutes after I updated this thread. Called a buddy of mine, one that was just having a seriously rough day, and he came over. About ten minutes after he got to my house we got to working on the truck. I mentioned in a previous update that the engine turned smoothly. What I failed to mention is that that was with the aid of the starter.
Now for the actual update.
My buddy got the motor to spin over, mostly thanks to the liberal use of both oil and PB Blaster last night. He was able to spin it over several dozen times to make sure that it really wasn't locked up. After that, we pulled the head off BUT... The front 2 and rear 2 studs were torqued down, and the middle 6? Heh. Nope. Not torqued down. Loose as crap! It makes me wonder who the crap put the head gasket on because that's a STUPID reason for the truck to have been sitting for damn near 2 years... Anyways. After pulling the head off we saw the head gasket and were VERY surprised at its condition. Nowhere on it was a visible tear or break in the gasket. As for the block and pistons, they SEEM to be in insanely good condition. However... There's a slight hard spot where it's harder to spin the crank with a socket wrench. It's when all 4 of the pistons are roughly at the same height.

Ignoring the fact that there WAS sludge all in the head, it's in pretty good shape. Minus a few valves that have heavy rust on them. Block, same. Good condition minus that rough spot. No holes in the walls, and no imperfections on the piston heads.

With all that said, I've been told that the rough spot is almost certainly being caused by bad piston rings or a bearing. Either way the block's gonna be coming out pretty soon and inspected further so that more of a game plan will be thrown together.

To everyone who's shot me their opinions on what it could be and all that, thank you. Seriously, thanks. But now I've hit yet another dilema... Should I go with oversized rings and bearings or no?

 

Oversized rings and bearings are a decision your machine shop should make for you. Depends on if you can get away with honing the cylinder walls or need to bore oversize. Same goes for the crank journals - if they need to be ground undersize to be cleaned up you'll need thicker bearings.

 

To be honest, I didn't know that. Thank you.

 

If everything looks to be in good shape (minus the rough spot), get some plastigage and torque down the main bearing caps and connecting rod bearing caps and you can see if you're still within the clearance tolerance allowed by the manual. It's good stuff. If you haven't used it before, I'm sure YouTube has some how-to videos.

 

Sub’d, I’m rooting for a comeback for this engine. It’d be the ultimate “can’t kill a Toyota” story.

 

I'd still just watch for a junkyare engine. Parts are high.

 

Sea foam

 

You have your ports and years backwards. Newer engines were 4 port, I think 01 is when that started.

Good luck OP!

 

Opps....taco dyslexic....

 

Wow....looks like you got the 4rz custard making machine....
those are so rare.......do you still have the little recipe book that came with it....

 

https://toyotatruckengine.com/1995-2004-2rz-3rz-toyota-remanufactured-engine-tacoma-4runner-t100/

 

Overheated the engine. Center heats up the most.
Warps head and stretches the the middle TTY head bolts....
Coolant floods in......

can you imagine all the cel codes thrown......

wonder if that cylinder hydro lock and bent that rod....
bet there's no honing that cylinder....if so....

I would of sent pics to toyota......they may of bought it from you....
thats the Steven King of Tacoma stories.........

You probably wouldn't have traded anyways.....too much sentimental value....



Like I said last week ......see about 3 of the 4 bangers have the blown head gasket.....each week. About 1 of 10 is head crack right between two valves......

For 5vz's we see 1 maybe every one or two months.......but half time it ends up being crackhead.....

 

To be honest, I've owned three Yotas so far (Counting a Geo Prizm since it's just a reskinned corolla) And all 3 of them were damn near impossible to kill. But when they went, they went catastrophically.

 

Oh I am. Hoping for one with low miles but I'll take what I can get.

 

Shell might make a pretty good host for a 1UZ swap. Looks fairly clean.
Or a 3.4.

 

There's a huge vendor market on gen1 taco replacement heads.....
same with denso radiators......huge turn over......
leaky bastards.....

Its the short blocks in short supply lately.......
including all the bits and pieces to put humpty back together......

Cheapest long block combo I can put together is about $2700 these days...2rz/3rz...

 

That guy who got that $2200 jdm......needs to go play the lottery...

JDM 3.4L swap parts list double check?!?!?!?! | Tacoma World