babyfood1217

Short back story:

I've had my 1993 4runner, with 5sp and 22RE, for a few years now. It's always had a noisy valve-train, and a slight knock. I'm been pretty regular with oil changes and maintenance, not wanting to exacerbate the problems, and thus far it's been fine. The truck gets used a fair amount for commuting between the gal and myself, and it heads to the mountains pretty regularly.

So. Saturday morning, I was driving up Snoqualmie pass. A tallish pass east of Seattle, it's always been a little bit of a grunt for my truck to get over, but has always been doable. This time it seemed just a touch slower than normal, but nothing stood out. I was really starting to lag behind, so I down shifted to get a little more gumption. As soon as I let out the clutch, I knew something was off. The truck sounded different, and the "gumption" I was expecting never came. I only had two more miles to go, so I stood on the gas, made it up to the pass, and got off at the exit and my destination. The vehicle sat for the next 11 hours while I was out with my alpine climbing club.

Upon entering the vehicle for the drive home, I noticed it started up ok. However, after a mile or two on the freeway, I began to notice an extra little sound that only appeared when I was on the gas. I kept my ears peeled for it, and continued on my way. As I got down the pass and less assistance from gravity on keeping my speed up, I noticed the engine was lacking power and the ability to accelerate. The noise was more pronounced as well, occurring primarily when on throttle. Significant loss of power throughout the duration of my drive home led to some speed ofs ~40-45mph on even the slightest inclines, accelerations from on-ramps to took at least a couple miles to get up to speed, and by the time I got back to the city (Seattle), the inability to idle without stalling. The sound was embarrassingly loud by the time I got home, as my neighbors were all staring at me.

Because of my existing knowledge of the pre-existent knock, and the valve train noise, I figured it was going to be one of those two things. I have adjusted the valve 1-2 a year as long as I've had it. It has a few aftermarket rockers in it, and I've always experienced the adjustment screw/nuts on those specific rockers not staying tight as I would like (a few thousands off, nothing too major.) It was the knock that worried me the most. I figured I finally really rolled a rod bearing, starved a rod of oil, and began a scour and grind fest between my crank and a connecting rod.

After staring a screen for a bit, I decided to go shoot some videos and try some things out. I was planning on pulling plug boots one-by-one to see what effect that might have (to help indicate the likelyhood of a rod-knock.) The sound upon startup seemed higher up, I mean, close to where my head was when looking into the engine bay. Before I started pulling boots, I had the idea to pull of the valve cover quick and see If I could notice an major things (I was thinking I would find the shrapnel from a busted rocker. or a bent valve or something.) I pulled the plugs, and #3 looked like there had been a fair amount carbon fouling and soot buildup. 1,2 and 4 looked tan and decent. All were dry.

With the cover off, I quickly noticed the three aftermarket rockers all had major play. Ex.#3 had almost .25" of clearance! I knew that would cause some issues, so I set out to put my valve clearances in check, and when I got to Ex. #3 and found the adjustment kept going down without applying any tension, I knew I had a problem. Wiping some oil away from the cam, the problem became very clear. There was no more pad on the rocker, and the cam had been grinding away the rocker itself. The cam lobe is very worn, the aftermarket rocker is very worn from where it has been riding on the cam directly, and I couldn't find any large chunks from the rocker pad. Crappy thing is, the three aftermarket rockers are iron/steel, not aluminum like the others. I began to run a magnet around the top of the head, looking for rocker pad chunks, and I began collecting tiny magnetic particles. Not sure if the are from the pad, or the ferrous rocker itself. Damn.

So at the very least...
- I know I need some new rockers, and a new cam
- I likely have steel/iron particles in my oiling system
- All sort of fuel getting detonated in #3 with progressively less means of getting out? What should I expect to find there?

Side view of the #3 exhaust rocker


End view of the #3 exhaust rocker - notice the difference between the two types of rockers. I believe the tan one is OE (and aluminum.)


Started up just fine, here is sound at idle and with a little throttle towards the end

Here's the rocker and the lobe. Wear is pretty evident on both parts here.





Ugh.

-Chris

babyfood1217

I think I've read somewhere that an earlier rocker (20R and prior) will fit into the later assemblies, it's just made of iron instead of aluminum. Any truth to that? Not that it matters now. Given the metallic grit I'm picking up with a magnet, the motor is pretty much done now, right?

akwheeler

You could hope that the oil filter did it's job well and that you don't have metal particles throughout your engine or chunks in the oil pan. You could put a reman or new head on it and go. Personally, I would either rebuild or replace the whole engine.

ZARTT

1.) Give a shout out, and trophy to the genius who mixed aluminium and steel rockers in an engine, lot of thought went into that move.
2. Buy a reliable, warrantied, replacement long block engine for the vehicle, and have a skill full Toyota person install it. Mucho bux, but mucho peace of mind.
3.)If it was you in item #1, then don't let it be you in item #2
"Pride goeth before the fall"

mikesnyhere

replace with genuine toyota rockers ,and look at the cam most likely its damaged too . drain all coolant before removing head bolts -unless you decide to just change head gasket ...your call. flush out the engine using whatever you decide- new filter . once its back together change the oil and filter after a couple hours then again after a few hours . you'll know before second oil change if it'll be ok .my money is on it being fine... I have had 20r ,and re engines for over 38 years and 5 different trucks still have 2 with over 400000 miles each ,trust me it takes alot more than this to kill a 22re . gaskets, go with felpro head set permatorque kit there 85 dollars abouts or spring for genuine toyota .. if you can turn a wrench ok you should be done in less than 8 hours taking your time the hard part is getting the vacum lines all correct . there are good pics on this forum for that though ....good luck .

mikesnyhere

if you decide to fix it ,you could even change the timing chain and use the access to flush out the pan ,and check the oil passage for debris . but I think the filter caught it . im just reassembling my 90 22re now i pulled the head for a suspected head gasket leak under -behind ex manifold .turns out it was not the head ! .about 120,000 mile ago on this engine i changed 2 rockers that failed , they were from napa ,and lasted 3000 miles .I put in genuine toyota.. they were not anything like yours but bad . i did just what i suggested to you 120k ago..

babyfood1217

Proud to say that it wasn't me who put those rockers in. I haven't always made the best decisions when wrenching, but I wipe my hands of that one.

That said, am I right in learning that earlier motors had iron/steel rockers that work (dimensionally, at least) in some of the newer motors?