It's all in my sig. A little luck, driving it like a truck, and paying attention to the coolant. I add a can of water pump lube/anti-corrosion treatment every year.

 

talked to toyota service guys a while back and they said the that the vehicles affected by the recall where 91-94 because Toyota out sourced the headgasket manufacturing to two differnt companies and 1 of those companies used substandard materials. so about half of the 91-94 vehicles with 3.0s needed replacement.

but because the head gaskets where all just dumped into a bin when they got to toyota. Toyota had now way of knowing which vehicles had good ones and which had the substandard ones. So they recalled all of them in those years.

Again this is from the Toyota Service manager at my local dealership

 

My 94 4runner sr5 had 90k when I bought it, blew hg at 160k (dealer said it already had previous recall hg). Now at 200k it blew again and I'll be tearing it down tonight. It's a shame because it's a great truck other than the head gasket issues. After this one she's either getting a 22-re replacement, or finding a new home

 

Sprince - have you considered having the head machined professionally?

 

The driver's side blew in the summer of 2004 BUT I'm reluctant to blame the engine because one of those little coolant hoses on the intake blew a few kms from home.

She got real hot, real fast. Pulled up to the house on steam and a prayer. My bad.

 

The previous owners replaced the head gasket on my 3vze around 134,000. It wasn't covered by the warranty though. Apparently, my 4Runner was built in late '89 making it too early for the recall (or something like that). It's got just about 199,700 on it now, and no problems with the gaskets.

 

I'm afraid to post. Its like the cover of sports illustrated jinx or something.

 

I found this editorial interesting:

http://www.babcox.com/editorial/us/us80222.htm

It mentions the graphite gasket solution that Jasper uses for the 3VZE. It also refers to headgasket issues with the 3.4.

I need to replace the headgaskets in a '98 Subaru Forester (2.5 DOHC). It uses the multi layer metal gasket mentioned which is apparently the only replacement available.

Interesting read.

 

I actually had two HG replaced under the recall. It was recalled again once the HG was redesigned.

 

I dropped my 3VZ-E off at the machine shop today.

The head gasket recall was done on my rig at 115,000 miles. There is currently 223,000 miles on it.
The machinist was telling me that my head gasket was very close to going bad. And that when the HG gasket was done that it was just the HG gasket, that the block should have been decked when that was done.

I am having it done right this time. And using head studs to hold the heads on.

Hopefully, this motor should go 350,000 miles.

But I won't be heart broken to replace a head gasket every 100,000 miles as a PM thing.

Is there a better brand of head gasket than the toyota redesigned head gasket?

Thanks.

 

Well I had a 93' x-cab 4x4 and it blew its head gaskets at 30,000 miles I got the recall motor and about 60,000 miles later the thing blew its head gaskets again, so I lost all faith in the 3vz, and got a 22re truck, havent had any problems since.

 

Recently bought a 1994 4Runner with 117k miles.
About 700 miles later blew head gasket.
Later found out through this board about HG problems in this vehicle.
Then found that Toyota had done a recall (which this vehicle had) on this vehicle at about 46k miles.
Do the math. New head gasket lasted 71 k miles. I wrote Toyota requesting help thinking one of two things happened, bad install on new gasket or bad replacement gasket.
Any advice on how to repair or get Toyota to help would be appreciated.
Has there been same types of problems with the 4 cylinder? Considering dumping the V6 and replacing with 4 cylinder.
Any advice would be appreciated.
Thx
stevea

 

If a HG is blowing that often, I'd suspect the head or block surface is not straight. I have 202k on my '94; the recall HG was done @ 92k (before I bought the truck) and I've NEVER had a problem. This on top of overheating the truck twice in the past 18 months.

 

How did a knowledgable guy overheat his truck twice? Also, did I read correctly that you have not replaced your belt in the last 100K miles?

I thought I was pushing it at 90k, and will replace it this summer. No problems here either.

 

I had it done twice. Once on the recall due to disappearing coolant and this one was covered on recall. Had it done again due to oil leaking from head at head gasket, but no coolant leak, go figure. I would have to look up the records to get milage and time between, but it was quite a few miles between.

 

This is in response to Freight Dogs comment of running 66% ethylene glycol. This is a commen misconception, more antifreeze better cooling. Water dissapates heat much better than ethylene glycol. In other words water is a better coolant but doesn't provide any corrosion protection. I always use a 50/50 mix using distilled water.

 

No headgasket issues..... yet (82K) Recall did not apply.
20% failure rate outside of the 1 recall seems a little high, meaning the 3.0 is crappy in the HG reliability


50/50 mix is optimal.



The main reason for using Antifreeze is because of its wonderful properties of freezing point depression/boiling point elevation, meaning the resulting mixture of water/ethylene glycol can withstand colder temps before freezing (ie -30) and higher temps before boiling.

I have seen antifreeze bottles with mixing instructions based on regional temps, but I recall doing a calculation in high school chemistry, and the added protection on the low end and the high end does not make a lot of difference, I think 5 degrees at the most. I like the idea of 50/50, it's brainless and one less math problem to solve in the field.

However the single most important thing is the distilled water. regular tap water, and spring water have loads of salts in them, even "filtered" water has what is called TDS. TDS is "total dissolved solids" when mixed with an organic alcohol and heated to 200 degrees, things happen and those salts will precipitate. The other water I have heard shade tree mechanics try is R.O. water, this is very bad, very bad. Water purified by reverse osmosis is EXTREMELY agressive, it will corrode stainless steel fittings (I have seen this in water treatment plants) it corrodes the Nickel I think. In the cooling systems you have a ton of dissimar metals (Aluminum, Iron, brass,copper etc) and they all hang out together via a mixture of water, salt and an organic alcohol, corrosion in some fashion is bound to happen

I was at the store the other day looking at all the different kinds of gallon jugs of water. There was all different kinds, some were filtered, some distilled, some Reverse osmosis, some with a combination of two purification methods. Get the stuff with distilled only.

my $0.02

I say this because I made a fatal flaw of putting tap water in my exploder, 9 months later a freeze plug developed a pinhole leak.

 

 

So does anyone have me beat at 250k and still going (at least to my knowledge) on the original head gasket?

 

My 95 was not part of the recall. HG finally gave out at 242K.