SolidDigital

It's a sad day, my only means of transportation, my first and only vehicle of over 8 years now is about dead..
I started it up today and it ran really rough... I thought maybe just because it'd been sitting there for maybe a week. It usually does run rough like that at first, but not quite that bad.

Took off and 1/8th mile down the road it doesn't have enough power to cruise in normal gear, had to keep it above 2k rpm's just to keep going. Felt like one of the cylinders wasn't firing or something..
By the time I got turned around, coming around one corner it stalled, had to pop the clutch to get it going again. It wants to idle around 400rpms and stall if I don't keep my foot on the gas.

So what would you check/do? it'd be nice if it were something as simple as a plug wire gone bad, I replaced those with carquest ones a few years ago.. just a couple thousand miles on em, wishful thinking though.. (how would you check them to see anyway? didn't save the old ones) I'm still guessing one of the cylinders lost compression and the engine needs to be rebuilt.

I can't believe I'm going to have to have it towed away... running like that it can't make it to a mechanic even. Anybody want a truck with lots of new parts and a really really rough engine?

bigt

that happened to me and it was my ignitor/coil..

how do your plugs and wires look??

86Toyrunna

lots of differnt things to check.. i my self would probably start checkin plugs and see what they look like. it could just need a serious tune up. as for the carquest plug wires.. ive never used them or seen them but i do know that when i bought my runner they guy i bought it from had just done a tune up and put autolite plugs and wires in it. i brought it home and decided to clean the engine compartment and got to looking around and one of my plug wires were cracked, so i had just got payed and had some $$$ burning a hole in my pocket so i went and got factory toyota plug wires and some new NGK plugs and she ran quite a bit better, no joke.. i was really suprised.

SolidDigital

I'll try to find some tools to get at the plugs.. when I had the timing belt replaced a few years ago they changed the plugs too. I think the place I had it worked on got their stuff from carquest, so they're probably carquest plugs also.

It never really ran good after that either which is why I replaced the plug wires, cap and rotor trying to help it out, but maybe a plug is just really fouled or something. I've been running farm fresh gas the past few tanks and it started running worse after that.
The fuel filter probably has less than 10k on it too..

bigt

yeah put some ngk plugs in it..new years they need a change..

then i would look at tps,afm or ignitor

Hwy 36 Offroad

I'm not sure what farm fresh gas is but when I run premium in my 22re it doesn't run well

myyota

When was the last time you replaced the fuel filter ?.

corax

often you can figure out what the problem is by asking yourself, "what changed right before the problem occurred?"

Fuel filter mileage doesn't matter, much like an air filter, if it's dirty . . .

SolidDigital

Went out there and started it... for a few seconds it wants to run right, then the idle goes to hell. With the hood up if I give it about half throttle when the idle is real low it wont do anything for sometimes 5 seconds, then the rpm's will go up.

There's this weird intermittent popping sound... I pulled the tube from the coolant overflow tank because it sounded like water bubbling in there, but it did it with that out. Then I was thinking maybe the AFM is flapping shut hard when the idle goes to almost nothing..

The coolant overflow tank does seem higher though and when I had the tube pulled out of it and the idle was doing it's low almost stalling thing, there was a constant stream of coolant and who knows what else pouring out of it, any less and it'd be dripping in there. The headgasket was done by the previous owner around 35-40k miles ago, but I'm guessing with the overflow tank being a weird level it could easily be that again too.
It still looks like coolant though and the oil dipstick still looks just like oil, not mixed from what I can tell so far.

Plus there's the smell of unburnt fuel, I had to sniff the overflow tank a few times to make sure it wasn't coming straight from that.

rusche

Something similar happened to me recently, though not quite as severe (idle around 500, but wouldnt die, lack of power)
My EGR was plugged up

89needsatranny

mines getting that way and my code says somethin about the EGR valve.... did you just clean yours out?

bigt

sounds like your throttle position sensor might be out of wack or your arf or o2 sensor?
could be lots of things do you have a multi meter?

sa51

hmmm... i'm getting an egr code too, i havnt cleaned mine yet. the only issue i'm having is poor fuel economy

Red3.slow

The stalling and low rpm sounds like could be a vacume leak

SolidDigital

Haven't messed with the EGR.. The TPS isn't very old, 02 sensor is old.. I have a multi meter but dont have a clue where I should start testing.

I actually ran it without the TPS hooked up when I had to replace that... ran like new compared to this.

SolidDigital

Fun stuff.. thanks for all the help everyone. I think I'll try pulling the EGR off, check all the vacuum lines, and try checking the plugs.

One thing I did which was bad last fill up (I'm 2/3rd's through this tank) was top it off till I could actually see the gas in the filler neck. Don't know if a messed up evap could cause all this or not.


Thinking back though it's really just gradually gotten worse and worse over the past few months, especially on this farm fresh gas. The problem idle would just go away after it got to operating temp before. Now it just wont let it get to operating temp....
It'd be nice if it were just junk gas and I could put some type of additive in the tank and get a fresh tank of top tier gas to solve the problem.

ozziesironmanoffroad

check all your injector wire plugs, mine did the same thing urs did, turned out to be a corroded fuel injector wire.

rusche

Popped it out and hit it with the compressor
Piece of carbon jammed it up
Good as new afterwards
Vacumme test it, EGR only works under moderate throttle, if its on at idle, its jammed up.

SolidDigital

Got the EGR off, the tubes seem clear but I don't know about the inside. I thought I saw a diagram of the inside of it posted somewhere once? There's gotta be a way to get in there..
I'm thinking about soaking it in carb cleaner, bad idea?

SolidDigital

OK how about burnt valve? After cleaning the EGR out and starting it again it wont stay running unless I hold the gas at about 1.7 to 2k rpms.
Every few seconds along with that AFM popping, the exhaust pops hard enough to move the gravel in the driveway.

I remember reading a while back that a way to tell if you have a bad valve is to hold a piece of paper to the exhaust and if it gets sucked back towards it, a valve is going bad. Well when I tried that a few years ago that's pretty much what happened with the paper.
Maybe that valve is now completely shot and that's the problem?