198K miles on my 91 4Runner V6 auto, and it finally needs a starter.

I bought a Powermaster starter for my 454 GMC truck....The best starter I've bought ever, but I wish they made them for Toyotas!!

What are my choices for a new Toyota starter? Factory?

 

Junk yard or rebuild yours. Apparently, most commonly its the starter contacts which go, and 90% of the battle replacing those is removing the starter.

 

Recently had the dreaded "click" when starting my '94, bought a set of new contacts and was ready to attack it, once the temperature got above zero! Well as luck would have it, with a combination of excessively cold temperatures (-24) and the inability to find the "sweet spot" my starter finally let me down. Figured I only had $10 into the contacts, needed to have it fixed, so I took it to the dealer, and had it replaced for $370, not bad I thought, sure beats freezing my butt off up here doing it myself. The contacts, I figured I'd put a string around them and give them to the girl friend as a necklace... No issues since then.

 

Toyota starters are high quality units. I had mine rebuilt when I pulled it for the clutch job. Much, much cheaper than a new starter.

You will not want to go through the pain of the removal process any more often than necessary, so stick with a high quality starter whatever you do.

 

Remove and replace the contacts. Ive done it, starter wil be good to go for another 150k

 

I'll consider replacing the contacts....but I've only heard bad things about getting the starter out. Is it done through the opening in the P/S wheel well?

I'm very used to working on my GMC truck, which is a breeze to work on.

Any tips on getting the starter in and out would be appreciated.

Thanks!

 

Getting the starter out is actually quite easy. I was having some hard starts over the summer and pulled mine to replace the contacts, which only slightly improved things. I decided to buy a rebuilt Denso unit from Napa, which set me back about $100 and haven't had any problems since then.

 

unbolt the motor mount on that side and you can jack the motor up a little on that side. It'll make things much easier. (I had headers on when I did mine!)

 

http://www.4x4wire.com/toyota/maintenance/starter/

 

That's good info guys....thanks a lot.

That's what I like about this site.

 

Dont forget about the acces panel in the fenderwell. It has like 5 or 6 10mm bolts, pull it out and you should be starin at the starter.

Removal is not bad, but make sure you got lots of extensions to get the one bolt from the front. I used a bunch of shorter extentions, this allowed for some flex in the extensions so allow me to route it to the bolt.

Just take your time check out www.4crawler.com for more tech and how toos.

You will never find a better aftermarket starter then the oem Denso starter.