coldtriton

I just became a member to this site, though I have visited here a handful of times...

Im having some problems with my truck.

Let me break this down...last January at 192,000 miles, I had a major rebuild done. The rings for cylinders 2 and 4 were nearly shot, and 1 and 3 were not pretty either. Rather than do it myself, (The top-end had previously been rebuilt by myself and my brother-in-law and ran great for about 4 years until this last January.), I decided to take it to a shop and save myself some hassle. To make a long story short, after paying $3400 for a whole newly rebuilt engine, a new clutch, and labor, the truck ran great...

I ended up loaning my truck for about 2 months to my then recently-made ex-girlfriend who's vehicle had just died and who was pregnant with my child.(I was trying to be responsible and be a "good man"), anyway... when I got my truck back, after she had bought a very nice new Camry, I started to drive it up to a friends house who lives at the top of a respectable grade...I overheated!!! Upon checking my coolant, there was none!.. I then checked the oil... there was none! I quite angrily did an oil-change and put coolant in it and watched everything. And my truck drove fine for months.

Until about 2 weeks ago. I noticed when I fired my truck up, thick smoke was coming out of my exhaust...Uh oh!. Upon checking my oil-cap, sure enough, there were traces of water. Blown head-gasket. And I had already put too many miles on it to use the engines warranty (i put 20k on it since Jan.) Ok, time to pull the head...when I pulled the valve-cover, I noticed massive amount of black deposits, and what looked like flecks of silver and rust colored particles. After pulling and cleaning the valve train, I could plainly see that the frame of the assembly,( but not the valves, springs, lifters, etc,) was rusted, and appeared to have been covered up by spray-paint....as if the parts used to rebuild the engine had been sitting in some salvage yard rotting for years with very little refurbishing. Anyway, I got everything done, new gaskets all the way around, cleaned everything, checked head for cracks/warpage, got everything hooked up right, and it runs, but now I have a loss of power, and rough idle.

Adjusted valves, set timing, rechecked everything, tested injectors, checked compression, tested wires/cap (still very new), new plugs, even rechecked gap after putting em in the first time, went over vacuum lines, and finally used a sonic leak-detector and went over the whole intake and air assembly. Intake was fine, but did find leaking in the air hose going into the throttle-body. Unfortunately it was nearly dark when I finally found the leak, so it has not yet been repaired, but my main question is:

Could a small crack in the air-assembly make me lose power? Enough to notice? The truck seems to rev ok, not perfect, just ok,...but when I am actually driving, it is extremely sluggish (takes about 5-6 seconds to get from idle/stop, to 3500 RPMS in 1st gear, as opposed to its normal 1-2 seconds). Is a leaky air-box/assembly or faulty MAF sensor going to make me lose that much power?

I now remember that while tightening the bolts that bracket the coolant pipes to the back of the head, I sort of slipped and a good part of my weight was put on the filter end of the air-assembly. I heard a grating noise, and noticed the bracket for the K&N FIPK had been slightly bent. Im now assuming that this is when the crack in the air-assembly was made as well...also, speaking of the FIPK, it is definately much louder than it is supposed to be...

Thanks!

84sr5yoty

Absolutely!! ANY air that bypasses the AFM (air flow meter) will cause the truck to run like utter crap. If you don?t believe me, try slowly removing either intake hose between the AFM and throttle body while the engine is idling


The AFM could be on its way out, but don't jump to conclusions just yet until you repair the vacuum leak.

thook

With a leak, the airflow meter can't properly monitor the volume of air or temperature, and so it's affecting your fuel injection duration and spark advance timing. In other words, you're getting more air than what the VAM is sensing and so the ECU can't compensate for it. Too lean on fuel and slow timing, for practical purposes.

coldtriton

Well, though there was a small leak, it seems that it was negligable. I tried an entirely different assembly from the Mass Air-Flow Sensor, all the way to the throttle body, and I'm still having the same issues...

Though I noticed something...when I set timing, my distributor is almost fully advanced on the bracket. Could I have accidently skipped teeth when I connected it to the timing gear? Could this account for my problem? I made marks but the paint-pen somewhat bled so it was hard to tell...

Any other ideas? Throttle Position Sensor?

At this point I'm contemplating this http://www.toyotacatalog.net/M1WebGe...6-46BB2FBE6782
, and hopefully bypass whatever is causing the issue....

thook

Yeah, skipping teeth is possible. It would run really bad then. But, you're timing is good...right?

You could test the TPS or even the coolant temperature sensor. Either of those would cause those problems.

Have you gone over the troubleshooting guide in the FSM?
http://personal.utulsa.edu/~nathan-b.../3troubles.pdf

coldtriton

When I set it to proper timing it idles and runs like utter crap, so I had advanced it slightly to make it smoother, but am so far advanced that it can't be forwarded anymore...so now I want to pull the distributor and reset everything...

lonestar

TPS would make it not idle well at all and also send a check engine code..
Should I assume that you are jumping the diog. leads before you check the timing. Spark advance is a wonderful thing

84sr5yoty

Yeah, the distributor should be positioned somewhere near or dead center of the slotted adjustment. It sounds like your dist. is off a tooth.

Are you checking your timing with the te1 connector shorted? Does the idle drop when the connector is shorted? Is the idle adjusted below 950 RPM's?

SCYOTA

I would also say that your distributor is a tooth off. The super slow response is a characteristic of retarded timing. To set the distributor correctly, set your crank at TDC then pull the distributor. Next, turn the rotor so it is facing straight up (12:00). When you push the distributor back in it should turn counter clockwise to about the 10:30 position. There is a little mark on the distributor housing and it should be in line with the center of the rotor.

coldtriton

Hehe thanks everyone, I ended up pulling it yesterday, reset it, and "cha-ching"!, everything is as it should be. I just drove 300+ miles and all was well...

Yes I was timing it after jumping the diagnostics box, proper specs was really bad, so I had advanced it and it seemed to idle right, but had no power and after pulling the jumper idle actually raised rather than drop...but after pulling and resetting the whole distributor, all is well.

I learned an important lesson....as a friend told me, just because the distributor is sending spark properly, doesn't necessarily mean that it is properly in sync with the cam, and in turn, the opening and closing of the valves.

I really appreciate the help, thanks again!

Now its time to start focusing on doing other things

SCYOTA

Glad to hear you got it going. Let us know if you need any more help.

just a 22re

ok this is a hijack!!!!! going straight to scyota i have the same problem on my new fresh rebuld with about 200 on the clock shes slow very slow and i have the torker cam it should be alot faster but with my dis i have it set were its set at tdc but with it it at 0 its at the full retard i dont think thats good so im guessing that i have to do what you said right tdc dis at 12 o'clock and slide her in right? cause then it should be all set right???? im not sure but i think i wanna go and try it whats it going to hurt at this point? anyways i hope you get to read this cause i really need to know soon as im leaving for a road trip upnorth and i need her running smoth for it

SCYOTA

Sorry it took so long to reply. It won't hurt anything. You probably have the same problem because the distributor should be just about centered in the adjustment. Use a timing light to set your timing once you get your distributor put back in.