A Mystery Glitch After Eight Years!

Hello Folks!

I'm new to this forum and from Canada, eh! Love my 2008 6cylinder Toyota Tacoma TRD and it was purchased brand new and well maintained and serviced over the years. It has approx. 278,000kms on the engine and as of a year ago I started experiencing something that no one to date, dealerships included has been able to get to the bottom of so I'm really needing some help if anyone out there has experienced the same issue/glitch.

It will randomly fire up and then die multiple times before actually firing up and stay running. It happens once every 3-4 weeks and I'll drive the truck with no issues at all and then bang, it happens again. I have spent the last year trying to get to the bottom of this as I need and depend on my vehicle for work everyday.

After many discussions with good trustworthy mechanics I have been told it could be fuel pump relay, fuel pump resistor or fuel pump sensor issues. I've put in a brand new fuel pump relay but the problem still persists. I've also been advised it could be a throttle position problem???

If anyone can help me try and solve this I would be eternally grateful and thanks in advance for any advice coming my way! Cheers!

 

mine does that every time the battery is disconnected and then reconnected. it will crank but not run the first time and then i have to crank it again before it runs. but unless u (or someone else) are disconnecting your battery every 3-4 thats prolly not it. but you are saying that it actually runs upon start up but only for a few seconds right? if my conversion is right thats only about 167,000 miles which seems really low for anything major to be happening. i would suggest starting at the cheapest easiest things to "fix" and go from there. you may wanna try disconnecting the battery and letting the ecu reset and see if that fixes it. (i would do this first as it is easy and free)

 

many thanks for the feed back and I think I shall try the reset suggestion on the ecu as I do not disconnect and re-connect the battery ever and the current battery is new. Thanks very much for chiming in for me!

 

IDK but on an older car I had would do that,maybe it's a dirty fuel filter...

 

Thanks! I will look into that as well. Cheers!

 

Vacuum leak is the first thing that comes to my mind. Does this happen at a certain temp?

 

I had a similar problem on one of my cars and it ended up being a leaky fuel injector(s)

 

That's a new one I have not heard of! Temp does not seem to be a factor at all as this issue happens rain or shine, hot or cold or humid or dry. Thanks for the help!

 

another note about the injector deal...when it wouldn't start after a few tries, after it finally did start, there would be brief white smoke due to the extra fuel in the cylinders. So if you have no smoke, it may not be that

 

no smoke I'm afraid. Thanks!

 

Troubleshot a similar problem with an old acura. Turned out to be clogged fuel pump. New fuel pump and filter fixed it. Only difference was his problem was more predictable and he would also stall out if he throttled it too hard.

 

Thanks and noted! I'm also wondering if it could possibly be an ignition switch issue? Could that be possible?

 

Have you ever cleaned the throttle body?

 

Indeed, throttle body has been cleaned HOWEVER, I have also been advised that it could be a throttle body position sensor that might be going bad or simply has already gone bad. Thoughts?

 

I have this same problem just trying to figure it out.. Same year and about the same km... One guy told me the computer other than that I've herd all the same things as you. Was going to start working on it myself but I think it's a shop problem.. Plus my dip stick pops out and a guy told me it was a valve of some sort. Does yours do the same? I'll look into it more n get back to you

 

dirty MAF will do this same thing
old throttle position sensor will do it (use ONLY an OEM replacement if you swap it, don't
be fooled by 'compatible ones' they work for about 3 months then go to shit )

 

Thanks kindly for the info. At the risk of sounding stupid whats an MAF? I'm now going to move on to getting the throttle position sensor inspected and see if that works to solve it. Cheers and thanks again!

 

Its a weird one no doubt! I simply keep searching but somehow I think I'm getting closer to finding the solution.

 

maf is mass air flow sensor common to nearly all fuel injected gasoline motors

it has temp sensors in there and a hot wire. the temp of the hot wire tells
the ecu how much air flow there is (actually it measures resistance but who cares)

they make special cleaner spray to blast the wires clean. they are fragile wires
so only clean with spray designed for MAF...nothing else...or it's 300 bucks

the wires develop a coating of mung on them over time since PCV gasses
on engine shutdown circulate around and microscopic particles land on the
temp wire or hot wire. doesn't matter, they need to be checked and cleaned
every 30,000 miles or so, and a dirty one can do all sorts of strange crap
to the ecu and make vehicle stall, hard start, or run like poop

clean MAF is super easy to pull and clean

and dirty maf cause a ton of issues so it is
always the first thing to check.

 

Thanks so much for the detailed answer and for the education as well! Very interesting and I will put it down to get checked asap. Once again, can't thank-you enough for chiming in on this to try and help me. Cheers!