Is it dead? ('96 2.4L starting issue)

My 2016 Taco will be built in 3 days. I joked that my '96 would explode before it gets here.

Well.....

This morning, I tried to start it and only got a loud banging noise and lots of shaking. I got a misfire on cylinder #3 code with it. When I looked under the hood while the wife cranked it, I noticed that the pulleys were only partially turning.

Yesterday, I did put some SeaFoam into it. It was idling rough when cold over the past week or so; I figured that it could use an injector cleaning. Most of the can went into the tank and the rest into the intake. I ran it until the smoke stopped and parked it in the garage. Other than that, I replaced the spark plug wires because of a Misfire on #1 code I got on Friday. That seemed to help, but it was still running rough when cold.

Ideas? Is my engine locked up?

 

You replaced the wires but did you replace the actual spark plugs? That may help. Or the coils.

 

I checked the plug on #1, since that is where the misfire was. It looked fine. Could bad plugs or a bad rotor cause this type of startup issue? This truck doesn't have coils- it has a rotor/distributor.

I was thinking of the rotor (I've never touched it) when I got the first misfire code.

 

My bad I didn't see it was the 4cyl. Usually if my truck ever misfires it's the plugs. I donno what to tell ya. Good luck.

 

What about a broken starter motor gear? Seems like that could cause the banging sound and not let the pulleys fully rotate when cranking.

Other than that, perhaps an ignition issue because of a distributor problem?

 

UPDATE: FIXED

Replaced: plugs (why not?), wires (before this happened), rotor/distributor cap (Ding!)

All of the pulleys on all 3 accessory belts weren't turning fully when I cranked the engine. They would just sort of jerk/stutter. It made a god awful banging noise; the whole block shook.

I didn't realize that an ignition issue could be so dramatic.

 

UPDATE UPDATE: NOT FIXED

After driving into work (it ran great!), I just tried to start it up. Horrible shaking and banging noise.

I pulled the distributor cap off again to see if the engine would crank smoothly without any ignition (to rule out an ignition issue). SAME noise and issue this time. Last night, it cranked just fine with the cap off, which led me to change out the distributor + parts.

Now I'm thinking that the cross firing may have put too much stress on the original starter motor, possibly shearing off some of the teeth on the cog. I'm considering pulling the starter to examine it.

WTF??????????????