Transmission slipping

If the clutch looked good then it might be an issue with the flywheel causing it to slip. Since you're replacing both I'd be curious to know if it still happens when you get your truck back

 

I certainly hope not... I'm 4 days into a 3 month long road trip.

 

Oh I think I misunderstood then...so you had another clutch/flywheel put in recently and all is well? Or the symptoms are persisting despite the new setup?

 

No its currently at the mechanic's. I'll get it back this afternoon and hopefully all is well. The mechanic just called me an hour into the fix and mentioned the clutch looked fine and wanted to know if I still wanted it replaced. The previous owner said the clutch was replaced 10k ago and the mechanic confirmed that it looks newly replaced as well. Maybe it was just the flywheel that's the issue, but I don't really have the time to troubleshoot over a few days and lots of labor, just getting them both replaced and hopefully hitting the road this evening with a healthy taco.

 

I see what you mean, yeah hopefully the new parts takes care of it.

 

So turns out the previous owner did replace the clutch... Backwards. So it still had enough friction to work under normal conditions, but with any load it would slip.

The slipping has been fixed now, but for whatever reason, now the truck has developed a kinda miss that we think is a stuck fuel injector. In the morning it takes a longer crank, and after being turned off for like 10min after being fully warmed up, cranking is sloppy. Which has probably killed my catalytic converter with unburnt fuel. Which might be stuffing my exhaust because she seems like it's taking more gas to achieve the same acceleration as a week ago.

Not sure how the problems would have been correlated or if I'm just incredibly unlucky.

 

I had a performance clutch installed backward by a shop a few years ago, except in my case it was toast within a few weeks. Was a nightmare headache and cost me a ton of money to fix. Apparently it's not uncommon for that to happen especially nowadays since shops don't work on manuals very much anymore.

 

Damn. What made it so costly? (Beyond just getting it replaced)

 

That was pretty much the bulk of it, getting it replaced. I was in a bind and needed my truck working ASAP so I made the mistake of taking it to Toyota. Toyota dealers are notoriously expensive for big jobs like a clutch, and SoCal ones even more so. I got billed almost $3k to have a stock OEM clutch put in (new flywheel, bearings, etc.)

So $3k + $800 for the botched performance clutch install +$300 for the performance clutch that got ruined, I was out about 4 grand.

I did confront the initial shop that botched the first clutch job and they begrudgingly reimbursed me for the cost of the performance clutch plus a couple hundred for the install, but they eventually wouldn't budge on giving me the full amount back for the labor. Saying it wasn't entirely their fault for some stupid BS reason I can't recall, and I didn't want to have to fight them on it in a legal battle over a few hundred bucks.

So all in all about $3200 or so, still stings to think about to this day lol. That was a few years ago

Never go to a dealership for a clutch job, and make sure you do your homework with independent shops...like they say you get what you pay for.

 

Ouch. Yeah it was 1300 to have the flywheel, clutch, bearings, and a couple seals replaced for me in SLO. Luckily shopped around because the first shop quoted 1700+ I'm just glad to hear it didn't cause harm to other components. But who knows, it's possible this was the cause of my driveshaft failure a couple months ago.

 

Last clutch I had done 6 months ago cost me 800 from the dealership and I supplied ALL the OEM toyota parts plus the fly wheel resurfaced for 60.00.

Of course I found the Toyota parts for 1/2 or less then what the dealership wanted.

 

So like 1100 total with parts and labor?

 

Yeah the dealership near me is notorious for price gouging parts and labor. I went there to get a reman CV axle the other day, every dealership online quoted $122 after the $75 core charge. The one near me wanted $250 for it and they wouldn't come down on the price at all.

 

The clutch was yup around that but ended being closer to 1400.00 because I had
1) the transmission input shaft seal replaced,
2) the transmission rear output shaft seal replaced
3) the transfer case shaft seal replaced
4)The engine rear main seal too replaced

I figured the transmission is coming out so the added stuff will be cheap to do it now when the transmission is on the bench.

 

Gotcha. Yeah I had those replaced too. Fingers crossed I can use some injector cleaner to get the slight misfire issue sorted next. Worth the $20 to see if that will unstick my (probably) stuck injector

 

I'm not sure but if one injector were stuck and dumping extra gas in then the ECU would try to lean out the injectors to keep the air/fuel ratio proper based on O2 sensor feedback. It needs to try to keep the proper ratio for the catalytic converter to work. I guess I'm trying to give you hope that the catalytic converter is not toast. You'd want to rule out the ignition system being the problem too before pulling out the injectors.

 

If you have a scanguage guage type tool, look at your fuel trims

 

Yeah I hope that too, but it honestly sounds like the cat is shredded if you tap on it. Also the plugs and wires are new. So unless the previous owner found a way to put those in backwards as well, they shouldn't be the issue.

Also the main symptoms are just consistent hiccups basically (every few seconds.) They become more frequent and aggressive when I'm accelerating and it feels down on power a tad.

I have an OBD2 reader that I haven't used yet that I brought on the trip, so I'll see if I can't get those. But there's no CEL so if my reader can't get the fuel trims I was planning on pulling plugs to see which has fouled more than the rest to find the bad injector.

 

So my reader doesn't give me fuel trims, but I do now have a pending code for a misfire in cylinder 3. Fingers crossed that's an easy one to access...