zigzagph

Hello I am a newbie to this forum and to the 4Runner community. I recently purchased my first 4Runner (YAY), a 93 4Runner 4wd, 3.0, auto, 183K miles and need I some serious help. First I would like to say I have been reading alot of posts on this site for quite some time and many of them have helped me tremendously, so thank you everone for posting.

My problem is when I bought the vehical I noticed that it leaked pwr steering fluid and the engine had a little sputter to it which I shrugged off thinking that it was either the timing or plugs and hell I can fix that. So after replacing the plugs, wires, distributor cap, rotor cap, air intake, fuel filter and power steering pump the only thing that was fixed was the leak. The engine still has a rough idle, vibrates terribly between 1K rpms to 4k rpms and gets at least 10 mpg. The engine specs say like 180hp but I think my 4Runner has about 40hp. I need some help on where my next step should go. I have checked everything that I can think of and nothing has helped. Can someone help me before my nerves explode.

So my question is what can be causing this sluggishness.


Please!!!

Pretacopower

Welcome noobie!

Did you check out the Seafoam thread? Scroll down a bit and you'll find it, it has like 8 pages of posts or something. Might wanna try a dose or two of that for your engine and see if that helps with the idle. I know plenty of members here have had miraculous results with that stuff.

As far as the funky vibration is concerned, does it only occur while accelerating? Maybe a fuel problem of some sort (filter, injectors, ect.) Some other members that are much more mechanically inclined than myself while chime in soon.

zigzagph

Did that. Did not help.

TRunner

Could be bad valves. If you do get a valve job done I would highly suggest getting on eBay and buying the oversized valves and having them put in with the valve job. It is a major step in adding much needed extra power to the 3VZE and easily and cheaply done at that time. I did not find out about this until it was a day too late. :pat:

zigzagph

I like the idea of the oversized valves but do I have to get different heads. Also if I get that deep in the engine should I go ahead and get the heads ported, shaved, and polished ( although I really dont understand all that jargin ).

the_supernerd

See if there are any codes stored in the computer. I have heard that there might be codes even if the check engine light is not on. When was the last time your timing belt was replaced? It might have skipped a notch. Try doing a vaccuum test and maybe a compression test, that should tell you something about the valves and some other things.

zigzagph

No codes to report.

Is it kind of common for the engine to skip time. Because that is exactly what it feels like. Is it very hard to change the timing belt on this engine. I have changed the timing belt on a 300zx. Could it be any more difficult on this engine.

I am very interested also in the vac/compression test. Sorry for my ingnorense, how would one do these tests.

the_supernerd

I am not sure how common it is that a belt skips or how difficult it is to change. If you have done it before on a 300zx then you could probably do it on a 3.0. You can probably just pull the timing cover and see if the timing is correct. A vaccuum test is an easy test to do, but you need a vaccuum gauge. The gauges usually come with instructions on how to do the test and how to determine results. To do a vaccuum test you just plug the guage into a vaccuum port on the manifold. To do a compression test you need to buy a compression gauge. Those should also come with instructions on how to use it and how to determine results.