tgirkin

I bought a 1993 Sr5 4Runner about a year ago. Truck was previously owned by a commercial airline pilot who was the original owner, and was a maintenance FREAK! Truck actually looks and runs as new, and the pilot gave me a folder about 6 inches thick with all maintenance and service records. This guy had actually recorded EVERY drop of gas that had EVER been put in the truck since new. The previous owner pointed out the only problem was that the factory CD player had suddenly stopped getting power a week or two before. Radio and antenna work fine. I never really cared about this as most of my driving is short trips. Anyway, about a month after I bought the truck, I cleaned the engine. No high pressure water, just Simple green and a low pressure garden hose. About two days later my alternator and battery BOTH died, and were replaced. After this the CD player LCD display was ON all the sudden. CD player STILL wouldn't play a disc, but it was gettin power from somewhere. The display was all garbled, but it did show something. Then just as suddenly, it stopped again after about a week. Now bein not to bright, I cleaned my engine again last week......guess what?........alternator and battery were both killed.......had em replaced. CD player now back on, same as before.........Any ideas about where to start chasing this gremlin?.. I haven't seen any smoke or anything, and I dont even know where to start. Any suggestions would be great, cuz this is drivin me nuts!! And I dont wanna hafta replace my alternator and battery every time I clean my engine.

Denk

First, don't directly spray the alternator or battery with water. If you do clean those, use distilled water. As for the radio thing, could be an intermitent short somewhere. I know that when I replaced my factory CD out of my 90, the tech told me that most 2nd gen decks were recalled due to some fault.
But the best place to start would be to take out the radio and see that it works separately from yer rig (ie, hook it up to an external 12V source). Then if that is ok, check the leads in the harness that connect to the radio. I recently had a problem with the switched lead, which gives the radio power when you turn the key. After checking the harness leads, move on to the next connection, the fuse block. Work your way back to the battery. If you can't find anything, I don't know what to tell you. But at least its a place to start. Take your time, and double check everything. Electrical is not that hard if you take your time with it, and I would say that this problem would be the best place to start for learning. Also double check battery ground and alternator grounds.

Hope this gives you a place to start. Good Luck.

Now take a break after having read such a huge paragraph.