1989 Toyota 4x4 3.0 Xtra

This morning I noticed a little power decrease-not an insane amount, but enough for me to notice. My ride is about 15 minutes from house to school. Two weeks ago or so, dad and I replaced plugs/wires, distributor cap/rotor, fuel filter, and a few fuses.. Truck has ran fine since then, but it had that little loss this morning. So I popped the hood to check out anything noticeable and WOAH!



There is a TON of white, powdery crap all over the front of the engine and plenum. It's like somebody took some Tinactin to it. I've heard that stuff is left behind from evaporating water, but that doesn't seem to make any sense, with all of this showing up now.

Under the hood, there was splotches of black all over, like tar had been rubbed or something.. The EGR valve's black paint can come off with me rubbing my finger on it. Literally, no pressure on it, it will flake right off. The brand new plug wires are discolored and the metal lines(pipe looking things) look rusted and discolored.. One or the other. It just looks dirty and corroded all over. I'm not sure what this crap is.. I can post pictures later tonight, but I'm at school right now, not doing AP Physics.. (shh)

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

 

It sounds like battery acid/electrolyte to me. I can't think of much else that would do that. I've seen it do the same thing on a couple different vehicles now too(including my Toyota).

 

^^ yep -- Something similar happened to me, and it turned out my battery tiedown let go and the side of the batt was being ate up by the power steering pulley and sprayed acidic water all over the place

 

I agree. battery acid is neturalized by water. Check your battery (with gloves on), change it asap. Then take your truck to the car wash and hose all that stuff off.

 

3vz+loose battery= lot's of angry vacuum hoses/loss of power/huge mess. That's my experience. I'm not saying that's what happened to you but it happened to me.

 

All right.. It was the battery, like you all said! Power steering pulley had taken multiple tries at cutting the battery in half. Luckily it was still under warranty, though.

Thanks for all the input!

Much appreciated.