prepandy

Hi everyone, hopefully you can help point me in the right direction of a problem I've been having and I haven't posted in the wrong area:

I have an 86' Toyota pickup with extended cab, 183k miles, and stock EFI turbo. It's the 22R-TE (Toyota Hilux - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). Got her about 6 months from a friend of a friend, who supposedly only kept it at their work to drive junk from one end of the parking lot to the other at his business (a scrap yard). Hence, the low original miles. I drive mostly for work, and have put about 5k miles on her since. Since then I've had my starter motor rebuilt, as I was starting to have an issue about 3 months ago. Now I'm having a couple more issues, which I will lay out for you here:

prepandy

Issue 1
3 months ago, I started to not be able to turn on the truck after having just driven it a few miles in the morning. When I mean not turn on, I mean the engine won't turn over and there is no noise whatsoever whenever I turn the key. This happens ONLY whenever I started her up in the morning, drive less than 1 mile away for an errand (sometimes gas, sometimes the grocery store, etc), park and turn off the engine, and come back after having ran my errand. I had the starter motor rebuilt, but this didn't really seem to help the problem and it still happens. The engine will start/turn over after about 20+/- minutes, but no guarantee on time. I used to be able to simply put the truck into neutral and turn on the engine that way, bypassing whatever was causing the problem, but this trick has now stopped working, too. I'm thinking it's an electrical problem, but have no idea where to begin looking.

prepandy

Issue 2
About 1 month ago, I started to hear creaking noises under the car. Mostly when I accelerate as well as decelerate. It sounds like the truck is an old ship and the creaking noises come from below the truck, near the center of the truck. I didn't think too much of it, but at the same time, I felt a significant lack of power in my Drive gear, almost like it was in a high gear. Even though the truck is an automatic, I have started to drive like it was a manual - I lower the gear to L for stop and go city traffic, going up to 2 on highway onramps, and eventually ending on Drive when I am up to speed on the highway. I generally keep it on L or 2 in neighborhoods, because the D setting really gives me no power in stop sign situations. I'm thinking that this may be a transmission gearing problem, possibly due to how old it is, but can't be sure. I think that it is a gearing issue because every once in awhile, all of the drives will function normally (D actually feels like Drive, L feels like low gear and will give me the power and engine revs, etc). This randomly happens when I am put-putting around town and will only last a few minutes, then the truck will go back to its previous finickiness and I will have to "drive" the truck like a manual as previously mentioned.

Obviously I haven't brought it in yet to get it inspected to a shop, but I figured I would ask around here first to get ya'lls opinions on these issues I am having.