Anybody?!

 

So I got the old pump out and new pump in, what a job. After stripping it down to the timing setup, I released the tension off the tensioner pulley and the left cam gear immediatley spun and clicked 3-4 clicks off timing. Got my yota buddy over, rotated the cam gears back into their notches and threw the crank back to TDC at 0 degrees. Bolted everything back up and started her up this morning, ran fine, hit operating temperature and stayed there, but start getting a low idle. Like sputtering and almost dieing low idle.
When I looked at the distributor, it was fastened in the fully retarded position. So my question is, does it now need to be timed? It is running nice and smooth when throttle is applied, but at idle it wants to die, will timing it fix this problem?

 

If the timing is off it would need to be fixed anyway.

 

True. My mechanic buddy gave me a quote of $59.75 for timing it. Lets hope that is what is causing the low idle. Do these 3ZVE engines have idle set screws? I looked all over the TB, couldnt find one anywhere.

 

There is valve timing, from the belt's orientation itself, and then the timing from the distributor I think. Its possible the previous owner had changed the timing of the valves. Mine was 15 degrees off on valve timing for some reason. If I had to left field a guess, I would say the PO messed with the distributor timing.

 

Yeah the current owner (my buddy) said that last time he went in to get it smogged, the fella at the shop advised him his timing needed to be adjusted, aaaand he never got that fixed. I have no idea if their is any correlation between bad timing and water pump failure. But lone and behold, 4 months later, seized water pumped. When I took the old one out I couldnt even budge the pulley. So i stuck it in a vice, pulley side down, grabbed the pump itself and it STILL wouldnt budge. I can hear bits and pieces in the water pump housing plinking around.

COULD bad timing cause water pump failure?

 

Not likely at all that WP failed due to a timing issue.

 

Doubtful. The water pump is a very simple component. Its just a housing, a bearing, and a surface for the belt to contact on the outside of the housing. If the water pump fan won't spin, then that is why it failed.....cuz it failed. The bearing is toast.

 

My thoughts exactly. It was an Aisin Brand (Toyota OE from what I understand). With this truck having 170K on it, by the looks of it, this very well COULD have been the factory Water Pump.

 

Aisin is the way to go so that would probably be a fair assessment of it being original. I would say you got your money's worth out of that component.

 

Unfortunatley, this guy INSISTED I replace it with the cheapest one I could find on RockAuto. Sooo if this fails fairly soon, I hate to say I told him so :/

 

Its $60 for Aisin on ebay............

 

Well he wanted the $30 one off RA. I told him to stick with OE parts. Ive learned in the past not to stray away from Dana Spicer Drivetrain parts on my Heep. He may be learning the same lesson with his off brand water pump for his Yota. Who knows. All I know, is next time ill be charging him a bit more than pizza and beer to work on that 3VZE.