haystack

I recently joined the hilux owner club! Decided to take the valve cover off to check and see if the infamous plastic guides had been replaced with steel guides. It turns out that somehow with 235,000 miles, the truck has plastic guides, though they seem tight and in fairly good condition, so my guess is that someone put another set of plastic guides on...

However, I noticed that the driver's side of the chain is much looser (up to 1.5" of play) than the passenger side, which is quite tight. It is my understanding that the slack should be in the passenger side, and the tension in the drivers side. If so, with mine being reversed (slack in drivers side, tension in passenger side), should I be concerned? I'm planning on replacing the guides soon and could address the chain tension issue then, but to do so I will need to drive 1000 miles up to Montana, where I'd have a garage and tools. Do you think it'd be safe to drive that far with the chain seeming to be reversed in tension? Does this reversal of tension in the chain cause poor operation of the valves/timing/idle?

I'd appreciate any thoughts! Thanks!

1994 22RE, 4cyl, 235,000 miles, new head at 221,000.

YotaWoRx

The slack should be taken up with the engine running. The tensioner works with oil pressure. With the engine off, you can actually make the slack go to whichever side you want by turning the crankshaft clockwise or counter clockwise.

haystack

Oh yes, I forgot that the tensioner works with oil pressure. My brother (who has same year/model) mentioned that to me and I didn't connect the dots. So I'm probably safe then right? Of course, replacing the guides is still on the to do list.

wyoming9

iTrader: (1)

If there fine why mess with them at this time.

unless your pulling the head for other reasons .

Now did you install the new head ??

that was more then likely when the timing chain was done.

Unless the last owner or his mechanic was really into Toyota`s pretty good chance they were not aware of the steel backed guides.

most of the plastic ones go well over 80 to 100 thousand miles.

The steel backed guides were something that became popular .

I often thought just change the tensioner and guides but never have.