SOLVED! Post 2853 Leaking Injectors, Dealer Techs Rock! Extended Cranking after Engine Swap 3.4L 5vz

Ha! You're so funny! I know, I'm staring holes into the phone again.....my husband made me PROMISE not to call the mechanic......

This is kind of a good read overview about injector options. The section that interested me the most is noted below the link. We've often wondered whether we did just what it states when we used fuel injection cleaner - dislodged gunk in the system, which then deposited itself somewhere bad in the injector(s). Who knows, this seems to definitely be another one of those topics that everyone has a different opinion on.

http://www.ebay.com/gds/What-You-Sh...tured-Fuel-Injector-/10000000177899358/g.html

"Option 4 will not apply for everyone but some people may choose to try a fuel injector cleaner. Said cleaners average about 7.99 a bottle and seem to be a quick fix… too good to be true. These cleaners are packed with chemicals that can and most likely will dry out the synthetic rubber seals found throughout your fuel system. Dried rubber seals can cause an engine fire…not good. Also the chemicals will loosen up dirt just as it is supposed to do but without a good way to flush out the debris it is very likely that it will simply lodge more dirt in the nozzle."

 

I'm thinking our Taco was made here, and I'm thinking this could be the source of our problems.........

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMMI

"In January 1995, it began producing the Toyota Tacoma pickup truck."

"The choice of the Fremont plant and its workers was unusual. At the time of its closure, the Fremont employees were considered the worst workforce in the automobile industry in the United States"

"Employees drank alcohol on the job, were frequently absent (enough so that the production line couldn't be started), and even committed petty acts of sabotage such as putting "Coke bottles inside the door panels, so they'd rattle and annoy the customer."

 

its no big deal, I just don't want to do anything to make you feel bad



Koditten will just have to read the NSA transcripts of our PMs if he wants to know more

 

Yay, my other big brother is back

Sorry K. You'll have to wait for the movie to come out......

 

Sorry guys. Me thinks if we haven't heard from our mechanic by this hour, it ain't happenin tonight. Either that means it didn't solve the issue, or he actually has other things in his life to attend to besides our miserable Taco stuff. I was really hoping to hear tonight, but just doesn't seem likely now, as it's nearly 8 on the west coast now.....

Time for some dinner and more Boardwalk Empire! Keep formulating back up ideas of stuff to check *in case* this winds up not being the culprit......but how the heck could it not be? I'm not allowing myself to get excited yet, but I'd be really shocked if this doesn't solve the issue, with how those injectors tested, and everything you guys have taught me about what a leaky injector can cause......

Me thinks they did a half assed job "cleaning" our injectors, then put them all back, swiped our card, and sent us packing. Thanks to a little insight from one of my Tacoma World big brothers. Good night.

 

OK. Here is an interesting thought to really drive you nuts. My Toyota RAV4 has been having a problem that has been getting increasingly worse. When it warmed up it would stumble and stall at idle in gear. (i.e. at stop lights it would sometimes just die) Over 2 months of driving maybe once a week it progressed to even worse issues and would stall while driving and then not want to start. it acted as if no fuel. I ran a ful diagnostics and tested MAF sensor, IAC valve, fuel pressure, etc. Since it is a 2.0L 4 cyl I didn't really think about it relating here, and since we parked it 3 months ago, the vehicle hadn't even crossed my mind until day before yesterday when my brother said he needed to borrow it for a couple of months. So I started looking at it this morning. Found the failure to be the MAF sensor, even though it was reading correct data, and never once set a code. Well since you had your MAF sensor checked, but it was not ever replaced, I am really curious now.... So I did more checks. Google is your friend and under "Toyota stalls, or hard to start" I found several repairs involving MAF sensors on various Toyota vehicles.

 

Interesting. I scanned the whole thread and don't specifically remember if it got any attention.

On that note, I wonder if we have a intermittant cut wire to one of these sensors.

 

Thank you Bama! I really appreciate your telling me about this! I was starting to worry that my temper tantrum a couple days ago had caused everyone to quit giving input anymore - which is NOT a situation I want to be in at this point, when we're still not sure if we've identified the cause of the issue yet.

I promise, no more tantrums everyone. Please, keep giving me your thoughts and ideas! And if there's something you think we might have already checked but aren't sure, ask away, I won't get mad! There is WAY too much info on this thread, how could anyone remember what all has been checked or not?!?! Heck, it's my truck and I can barely remember myself! I often have to go back through the thread and track down what I wrote about checking this or that, and that's a long, tedious job at this point! So I'll save ya time, just ask and I'll do that part if anyone has questions or thoughts.

Bama, my question to you is how did you determine your MAF was failing? Whatever you did, I want to do exactly that same thing even if the injectors do fix the problem. That sensor seems to serve an important purpose, and its now 17 years old and has nearly 200K on it. And we all know that it's always possible to have more than one issue going on at a time, in the fun, fun world of automotive repairs. Good times!

And my other pain in the butt question - anyone have any leads on where to track down a brand new (assuming Denso is the OEM?) MAF for the best price? Will do my usual method, of getting the dealer pricing heart attack outta the way, then at least I'll know that's the worst case scenario and the $ number can only go down from there. Just looked on RA, but they only have off brands. When it comes to certain parts like sensors, I'm thinking brand new OEM is the only way to go, price heart attack and all. I realize searching for this could be irrelevant until we find out the condition of the existing one, but I want to do all I can to speed this process up and be ready with replacement parts plans when we have even just a hunch about a potential part failure......I want my truck back!!

 

Been rooting for this since the beginning. We had a corroded ground wire that "controls multiple ECU functions" found a few years ago, and that dealer diagnosis and repair was $125. And that's dealer pricing. We were braced for some horrible, time to have a Taco funeral, cost estimate on that one, because the truck appeared to be overheating, it was idling low, and lurching.

So that experience taught me how some dumb little wire can seem like a REALLY BIG SCARY MAJOR PROBLEM, then turns out to be a nice cheap quick little fix.

You can see why I've been rooting for this from the beginning.

Question, would a messed up ground wire be different from what you're mentioning here, K?

Pointers on how exactly to look for a cut wire to one of the sensors? Would this be the live data records you mentioned before? Haven't asked our mechanic about emailing that kind of info yet......

 

Waiting for the current run report.

I remember the MAF getting cleaned and "checked out". As to what extent mech #1 checked it out remains yet to be seen.

It's easy to get to for a replace, if needed.

The new mech does need to be gentle with that injector wiring harness as he works. I'm sure he knows this.

 

Thanks Mod!

Waiting for the current run report - meaning you're waiting to see if the injectors were the culprit? No matter what, it seems pretty clear that those injectors needed to be addressed, even if they aren't the cause of the hard warm starts, so I'm very grateful that our mechanic realized this and sent them to the best....

As much as I absolutely positively adore our new mechanic and his dedication to solving this, I notice every single diagnostic section of the FSM starts with "hook up your Toyota hand held scanner thingy" (OK they don't say thingy, but you get the drift - some kind of specific diagnostic tool that it seems ONLY a dealer would have access to). And I have no clue whether the Snap On computer/diagnostic tool our mechanic is using truly gives every bit of the same info as what that Toyota one would. Do any of you guys know?

Because, if the injectors are NOT the cause of the issue, that means we've now addressed literally every single aspect of our fuel system, so it seems to me we'd then be back to the fun world of sensors, wires, electrical, ECU stuff. So I can't help but wonder whether we'd be better off entering that world with the Toyota hand held scanner thingy on board. Really don't want to go there, but if it'd get me back on the road faster and cheaper at this point.......

 

Here's another one to ponder, any thoughts much appreciated as usual!

My husband thinks he remembers reading about how piston #1 HAS to be at top dead center before starting the new engine for the first time. His understanding is that this needs to happen in order for the new timing belt to be set correctly, then after that the computer takes over sorting out the timing (I think that's where the whole "non interference" thing comes into play?)

So his thought is, if that #1 piston was mistakenly NOT set at top dead center prior to the first start up on the new engine, then perhaps the ECU is confused and therefore the DOHCs are not opening in the proper manner (proper sequence I guess?).

He mentioned this thought to our mechanic a few days ago, and from what I remember (apologies to our mechanic if I'm a little off in quoting what you said - too much stuff floating around in my head!), he said it's not possible that this is the issue, because the computer handles the timing.

Thoughts anyone?

 

You mechanic has a great scan tool. It has the same capabilities that the Toyota TechStream, scan tool has. The main differences between his and the TTS scan tool is the latter has direct links to FSM and technical bullitins. His may actually have those features as well.

The main TTS software differences is that you can have the laptop make changes to simple operator parameters. Things like turning down the key chime, seat belt alarm, dome light brightness and a bunch of other things that I forget.

Incedently, your keychime is stupid loud. Its set at the factory volume, wich is loud. Oddly enough, that is one of the only alarms that you can't totally get rid of, you can only lower it to the lowest level.

I turn all my vehicles to the lowest setting and get rid of the beep when not wearing the seatbelt. I don't need an annoying reminder. I just wear the seat belt.

You said your truck was running great when running. If the timing was off, you truck would be extreamly bad running, if at all and there would be a CEL.

 

Got it, thanks K.

Off topic, but I started a new thread on TW asking for people's opinions on fuel injector maintenance, and a guy shared a link about top tier gas that I found helpful. So here it is for anyone who's interested. I noticed the place we've gotten gas 90% of the time is not listed. Hmmm. Not getting gas there anymore.

http://www.toptiergas.com/retailers.html

 

Couldn't resist anymore. I called him. He hasn't had a chance to put them in yet, so that makes me feel better - at least knowing it's not that he's scratching his head and saying WTF is it then, and how do I tell these people the news. There's still hope that we found the cause. He said he will put them in this afternoon, and we'll hear from him later today.

Thanks for reading TW.

 

Just got through reading pretty much all the posts,,, whewwww, cross eyed old man now.

Question for the real toyota mech. on this post,,, does her 98 v6 have a vsv on the fpr? I know on my 95 4cyl in the fsm, it has a specific paragraph for "hot start",,, and I know ya'll probably know this but it talks about when the engine reaches a certain temp (hot) the vsv is energized and it kicks the fpr in the hiney and it boost the fuel pressure for this issue, I pursued this some this past summer here in Houston on mine, one time just checking the problem, I unpluged the ecm connection on top of the vsv and took 12 volts straight to the vsv and it started right up,,,, just saying, kinda left it there for the time being. I ran into a problem that I won't get into now, to long winded, but I'll come back and ask my question later to some of you mechanics if you don't mind.

 

Thanks pulldo! Rereading your post a few times now to make sure I get exactly what you're saying, but in the meantime I was eager to say thank you for reading, sorry for the cross eyes! I owe ya one man!

I noticed something the other day in our FSM about that VSV thing and wondered if it could have something to do with our issue. Will read a bit on it and try to put together how to present this to our mechanic......thanks again!

 

Just got a package from out west. Wife keeps texting me about what and why I'm getting a box from out of state. Might have to do some 'splainin' when I get home

 

Good eye!
Is this (yours) a 98 FSM and are there any footnotes such as "applies to 2wd" or "auto trans only"? I am curious about exactly when this feature was discontinued.
The 95 V6 does have it (including the T-100), I just don't know when it went away. I always thought it coincided with the early presence of the V6 EGR system, but not 100% on that. I know 99 up V6 does not have the EGR or FPR VSV.
From the 3 pics you put up the other day I don't see any EGR system or the FPR VSV on yours.

Here is a diagram. It shows both systems, not sure if they were always used together or not, on the early trucks.
I'll get back to you on the "injector maintenance" in a bit, here or by PM.

 

Uh oh. I wondered if that would be weird. I know I'd probably react the same way......so I can't say I blame her. Maybe not such a great idea after all, sorry man. Wanted to find some way to thank everyone for sticking with us, and that was the best I could come up with. It was sent from my husband's work address, so you could always say some printing business in Oregon wanted to thank you for your....ummm....recent print order?

If that doesn't work, maybe tell her it's from Bama? I'm sure he's good at making those too, dontcha think? Plus he's a nice guy, he won't mind taking some heat for something he has nothing to do with, right Bama? Just look at his signature, something about always getting slammed, right?!