Wylekyote

First off, I'm new to the board. My name is Nick, and I'm a college student in Oklahoma

I had a '90 4runner that I bought off of craigslist three years ago for $150 and a tv...it's debatable who got the better end of the deal it was rusty, ugly, had a weak motor (but an amazingly reliable and seemingly bulletproof weak motor, as strange as that sounds), and I didn't do anything over the three years to make it any prettier...I'll post up pics and vids some time soon, but long story short the ol' 22re threw a rod through the block a few weeks ago.

I bought a '92 shortwide Toyota with 22re on Friday to replace it. It has a freshly rebuilt shortblock, however the previous owner installed the motor and didn't know enough to get it running. I fixed the timing (he had it set past 0 when it should have been 13 degrees on the opposite side...), replaced MAF with working sensor from my 4runner, drained the old gas that had some water in it, replaced fuel filter, changed plugs, etc.

I had it at least idling consistently before even changing out the gas/fuel filter, but it's still running weak. I did a compression test on all 4 cylinders yesterday and they ranged from 125-150psi, so I'm not worried about valves/rings/cylinder damage/etc. I did notice when doing the compression test that all cylinders were running rich, with the first and last (front/rear, I don't know firing order offhand) cylinders getting so much fuel that they'd already fouled the new plugs!

Any ideas what could likely be causing this? A leaking cold start injector?...I'm clueless at this point, and as a college student I'm financially unable to take a "shotgun approach" to repairs...

The exhaust was cut off by the previous owner right before the cat, but I personally don't think low exhaust backpressure would be able to cause anything but a small power loss...

Also, I measured resistance between two of the pins of MAF to be around 200ohms. The manual said this was a healthy reading, and the MAF worked great on my 4runner, so I'm left to assume it's fine as well.

Any input, advice, or even "welcome to the forums, I don't have a clue"'s are appreciated!

-Nick

olharleyman

Welcome to the forum
Now if you are getting a lot of fuel to the first and last injectors you may have a couple bad seals on them injectors. You may want to check and see if when it is running you are getting excess fuel around where the injectors and injector rail are and then you can rule that out or find it is the issue.

Wylekyote

Would the ECM compensate and dump more fuel into the #2 and #3 cylinders, leading to them being somewhat rich as well? Or would it be more likely that all 4 seals on the injectors are bad?

I might just pull the injectors off my 4runner and install those to eliminate them as a possible source of the problem. . .I was afraid that some of the injectors were going to be clogged up from that dirty gas, this would alleviate any fears of that as well (I put seafoam in the gas and let it idle for about 30mins in case that was an issue, but I still don't know that I believe they're all spraying right).

Thanks for the info

Wylekyote

Actually now I'm thinking I'll just pul the whole fuel rail from the 4runner, that might be my easiest option...

Wylekyote

Well I got the TB/intake pulled on the 4runner and unclipped the injectors right when it started raining on me...unfortunately the 4runner is at my dad's place, which is about 30mins from home and requires crossing a creek that floods at the hint of rain, which I'm not going to do in my IS300

I think that's as far as I'm getting today...

camo31_10.50

what college are you goin to?????

im goin to NSU in eastern oklahoma (Tahlequah to be exact) and i've been lookin to find a few toyota guys to go 4wheelin with!

Wylekyote

*edit* To answer your question, I'm going to TU.

There's a pretty good sized group of guys from the Tulsa area that go wheelin together, and several of us are TU students (well, 3 active TU students that I know of and a few other students will come out every once in awhile).

I'll be active again once I get this truck running! I talked to the previous owner and he said that the injectors are all new, so I really don't think that's the issue now. . .I started it up a few times (it'll start and 'run' for about one second and then die) and then looked as best I could around the injectors on the two most "problematic" cylinders and didn't see any indication of a problem. I did, however, find a wire clip (green/white and orange/black wires, still scouring the wiring diagrams for where it belongs) that has no apparent home and a small vacuum line that was just plugged with the broken end of...something? It looked like it had been plugged with something that was handy rather than the line actually being broken off at that piece. I'm not as worried about the vacuum line as I am the wires/connection.

I also asked the previous owner if he was the person who replaced all the vacuum lines, and he told me that he replaced a lot of the lines but just used the existing bad/rotted lines as a guide and that he wouldn't necessarily trust that they were all going to/from the right place. . .to be safe, I'm just assuming he plugged them all in as ass-backwards as possible and going from there.

I'm thinking about replacing the ECM/fuel rail/injectors from my 4runner's blown motor and also using it for reference when re-routing the vacuum lines. It's kind of the "poorboy's shotgun approach", but if that doesn't work then I really don't know what could be causing ALL cylinders to run rich and cylinders #1 and #4 to run really rich

If anyone has an idea as to what could be causing the problem, please chime in I'll likely try to start swapping everything in the next 2 or 3 days, but I can try other things until then. . .Since the truck is with me but 4runner is at my dad's, I can't really start swapping parts until I either get them both out to my dad's place or get everything I might need pulled from the 4runner.

rngrchad

Glad to see you ditched the GROCERY GETTER in favor of a truck. Even if it doesn't run well, it sure beats a soccer mom ute- grocery getting mall cruiser.

Wylekyote

Hahaha, I'd say the grocery getter ditched me as much as I ditched it...that being said, I've wanted a 'yota pickup or at least a 4runner with removable top for awhile now but couldn't justify it with the 4runner still goin...now the 4runner has a blown motor, I bought the truck like I wanted, and I can't get the damn thing running right...

Wylekyote

Well if I tested them both correctly, the TPS on the truck was bad. Pulled the whole TB and sensor, ECM, intake hose, and cold start inj off the 4runner, gonna head home, clean the grime off the TB butterfly, and install everything...hopefully the TPS will do the trick

Wylekyote

Installed TB with TPS from 4runner, and then realized the 4-prong plug for the two TPS units are different...checked wire colors and verified they were at least the same, so I cut the one from the 4runner and hooked it up. Truck started hesitantly once, but slowly choked out. Now the battery is dead from all the cranking I've been doing this week, so I'm stuck till I take it to autozone or o'reillys for a charge...

This truck has turned out to be a pain in the ass...

Wylekyote

I realize at this point that I'm essentially talking to myself in this thread, but just in case anyone is following I'll keep posting updates haha.

Pulled the battery a minute ago to take in to get charged, and saw that one set of wires I crimped for the tps had come undone...oh, the benefits of working in daylight (and not in the rain)...should know in an hour or two if the TPS fixed it.

thefallman

Hope you have better luck once the battery is charged

Wylekyote

Thanks! Haven't gotten a chance to put the battery in or wrench on it anymore yet because of rain, gf, and classes (who am I kidding? I'd work on it between classes in the rain lol)

The gf is stuck working till 10pm tonight, I'm hoping to get it running by then!

Does anyone know if the ECM from my '90 22re/5-speed 4runner will work in the truck by any chance? I'm thinking it should, but I don't want to screw anything up testing it out...

Lumpy

I would say it "should" but I'm not 100% on that.

I think once you have the bat and everything together you should be alright...since the TPS was shot, this may make a difference though, going from 2-4 prong.

thefallman

i would have to aggree with lumpy on the tps

Wylekyote

The TPS's were both 4 prong, and had the same color wires run to the connector (green, yellow w/ blue stripe, yellow, red), the only difference was the connector on the pickup had rounded edges whereas the 4runner's TPS had a more square plug.

I was talking to a guy at the local parts store whose been trying to follow my progress on repairs and offer advice where he can (he was a mechanic for 25+ years before he retired), and he said that supposedly using crimp connects rather than soldering can cause you to lose up to .5V across the connection (which doesn't make a lot of sense to me. . .V=IR, any added resistance would increase voltage or decrease current). I guess if it increased the voltage in one of the TPS wires by .5V it would still be sending a "bad" reading to the ECU, and soldering wouldn't have any effect on the resistance in the wires, so he could've been a litle backwards with his wording but still correct I suppose I'll go solder and shrink wrap the connections before I bother putting the battery back in, just to eliminate the possibility of crimp connects causing the problem...

Oh, and I'm still freakin clueless as to what that "extra" wire connector ,located in the same bunch of wires as the rear fuel injector wiring, is for .

It's got green/white and orange/black wires to it I believe, but I'm not seeing that combo anywhere in my shop manual (I could be overlooking it, that's a lot of fine print) and I don't see a sensor anywhere back in that area missing a plug. I'm wondering if whoever rebuilt the shortblock mixed/matched some wiring harnesses and sensors, and just left an incorrect "duplicate" back there to mess with the next guy who got it lol

thefallman

btw i checked car-part.com and they seem to think that the ecu's are the same at least for 4cyl MT 4x4 4runners and Pickups. So what i would do is pull the harness from your 4runner and patch the tps sensor back onto its orginal harness and then put that harness in your truck. ecu and all from the 4runner. got to be easier then trying to figure each and every little thing out.

thefallman

i have seen crimps cause issues like that before. and even sometimes not connect at all. so if u keep the old harness. solder them up

Wylekyote

Since the wire colors were the exact same for the TPS on both 4runner and truck, I'm gonna try soldering in the TPS harness from the 4runner and trying with the existing ECU first. If that doesn't work, I'll probably go cross-check the wires in the 4runner that plugged into the ECU and put the 'new' ECU in the truck for attempt #2.