ROOFTOP-SPECIAL

I just joined the toyota club I guess, I bought a 95 4runner 4x4 with the 3.0...My only other toyota was a corolla (my first car), made in the same year I was born (1982)

Anyhow, I've read all the overheating threads and can't really find one that fits my problem.

My 4runner has a electric fan that produces about 2100 cfm. The fan is hooked up to a temp switch that I installed. Most of the time my runner does not come close to overheating even here in Phoenix with the ac on. If I'm at a light for a while the fan will come on, but will turn off after about 45 seconds. When I bought the truck the guy said it has come close to overheating when driving it aggresively with the AC on. I have not really had an issue until yesterday. I decided to take it 4 wheeling behind one of our lakes. It's sandy, I had it in 4x4 with the ac on. I was only driving around for about 10 min when the guage almost hit the red mark. The A/T Oil Temp light came on. I turned off the ac and it cooled back down, I left the ac off and continued to drive around, It started to heat up again. I turned the heater on full blast to cool her off and decided to go back home.

I changed the T-stat, flushed, and burped the system. Drove the runner to work today and she did fine, no AC on though. Have not had a chance to off-road her since the work but wanted to know what you guys thought? Thanks for any input.

Casey

abecedarian

since it's an auto, the fan and radiator are also dealing with cooling the ATF. since your a/t temp light came on too, you might try installing an auxillary trans fluid cooler before the radiator and optionally elliminate the atf path through the radiator. there also might be something going on with the transmission as well causing higher than normal atf temps.

*edit- and it's hot in arizona too, so that may be complicating things as well.

putneysmachine

One question....did you use a factory Toyota T-sat? If not, you should. They are only a few bucks more, but actually work. Aftermarket t-sats are complete junk, I've seen soooooooo many fail right out of the box.

As you know, the v-6 does have some head gasket issues. I'd start looking into that and diagnosing it properly .

Marc

Does your fan have a shroud on it the same size as the rad?

If not, that could be the problem.

I went back to the factory fan/shroud and found it cools better.