regnar11b

I'm the second owner of my 1990 4runner 4wd 3vze (260k), its in great condition, very clean and is one of the two door series in the 90-96 body style. I have always kept it serviced and squared away but I think I'm going to have to take it in. After replacing the fuel dampner from leaking, I smell a slight oil smell from time to time on the driver side under the wheel well. I checked both the oil and h2o for any mixture but nothing. My fuel economy is still normal and there is no loss of power. When it warms up and idles every once in a while it will idle hard, not terribly bad but at the same time when it idles hard it almost sounds like the plastic hood over the fan by the radiator is knocking (just an analogy of the sound but it's coming from the motor). I can turn on the AC and the idle goes up and its fine but if I turn it off it might idle bad again for usually a minute or so before it automatically fixes itself. My idle is normally at .5, when the AC is on it goes to 1 and when it idles hard it goes down to .25 but like I said fixes itself and kicks back up. Other then that when its warming up about 10-15 secs from being started, steam will come from my tail pipe like its a cold morning for usually 3-5 secs then will go away and won't come back unless it sits over night.

Does this sound like a burned valve or bad head gasket?

And can they still fix the head gaskets under the Special Repair Campaign?

I'm pretty busy lately so I'm thinking about just taking it in to have it fixed... whats the rough cost on either of those two issues and is it worth it?

myyota

If its still running good and there is no water in the oil, then i doubt its the head gasket. It would be a good idea to pull the throttle body and clean it and also clean the idle air control, that will probably fix your idle problem. Do a search, there was a post about a week ago on how to clean the idle air control on the 3.0 engine.