you know what works really well for labeling? Electricians #'s. they come in books up to 50 or a 100 and are designed to wrap around wires. I take two pages and put one number on the hose or wire and then put the other one on the spot where it went, that's how we did my dad's motor swap in his f-250. you think the 3.0 has a lot of hoses and crap in there.... my god that ford had way to many hoses.

 

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I have over 226,XXX miles on mine and still runnin strong i have had the headgasket replaced under recall it didnt need done but did it any ways and replaced the timing belt and water pump and spark plugs just cuz of the age of it all its a great engine as long as it is babied

 

I have never been in anyone elses 3.0 so i don't have anything to compare it to, but mine seems pretty peppy. Seemed like it helped when i bumped the timeing from 10 to 12 degrees.

 

my yota's 3.0 had 212,000 miles before it died. i can take the blame for killing it because i failed to check the oil and sure enough, the only week i didnt check the oil it ran dry and the connector rods got jacked up. im sure it would have lasted way longer if i checked it.

 

how will you know if you have a blown head gasket?

 

My 95 p/u has 200k miles and is running stronger than the two previous 3.0 I have ran (with less miles) never had a hg change. This motor has had synthetic ist's whole life and maticulous matainence schedule, but runs like brand new, Backwoods, There will be whitish exaust smoke and brown rad fluid and milky oil if it is an internal leak,external you will see stream or a puddle of coolant.

 

you may not always be able to see any signs of hg failure(depending on severity) a friend of mine has a 3.0 and just got a little white smoke at startup, seemed normal...about 6 mos later it really let go, and he found that the white smoke at startup was coolant burning, and yes he had some damage to his cyl walls...best way to find out if you need a hg...compression test... i personaly would perform this every 6 mos...if i had a tester

 

I just sold my 4Runner with a V6. It ran great, but it didn't have great gas milage. 13 if I nursed it, 10 if I got some power out of it. I had a 4.3 V6 Jimmy before that and got about the same milage, with a heck of a lot more power. To talk about the HG, I have not known a single person who hasn't had a problem with the HG blowing, usually at about 60k to 100k intervals. Also, the 3.0 V6 is a royal pain to work on. A REALLY good Toyota mechanic can do it in 2 days, if it goes perfectly smooth. I can rebuild my 22RE in a day and have time for lunch and dinner. Aside from the HG, there is just no room in the engine compartment to work on it. All in all, I would go for a 4cyl toyota, there is less power, but the V6 doesn't have enough power to do anything anyway, so best so go with the gas saver, I get 22-25 on mine.
Hope that helped.

 

the 3.0 gets a worse reputaion than it deservers. much of its problems come from the horrible exahust crossover desigin. there is actually a point that the exhaust from each bank point in opposite directions down the same pipe. Holy resrtictive. and as for gas milage, i get 18-20mpg, which is the smae i got on all 4 22rs that i have had at differnt times. and i should grab a couple more mpg when i get my headers.

 

I avoided this thread for quite awhile just because of the title. Just tired of reading 3.0 bashing threads. I'm pleasantly surprised to see that most of the responses are positive.

I myself have a love/hate relationship with my 3.0. She is plenty strong for what I need. If I had to haul stuff I would have gotten a fullsize truck. If I wanted to beat everyone in the stoplight races I would have bought a supra(I wish). The engine is good for what it was designed to do. My only complaint is that she is a little thirsty. I get an average of about 15-16mpg. 13mpg if I have that handy little ECT button pressed the whole time.

Jason