Make sure you do a good job labelling your vacuum hoses. The spaghetti mess of vacuum hoses on the passenger side of the engine is probably the most intimidating thing to look at before tearing apart the 3.0L, but if you take lots of pictures, and label each hose before removing it, you should be fine.

 

Sheesh... I went quite a while without my 4Runner......

Found a solution to my "should I rebuild my engine" question. Buy an engine and have someone else (who knows more and does it for a living) install it.

So that's what I did. I found a local guy who specializes in Toyota engines to do the work. He's got a very meticulously built truggy in his shop so I feel pretty comfortable with him working on my rig. While the engine is out he's also putting in a Marlin Crawler heavy duty clutch.

So I should be back on the road in a couple weeks. =) Can't wait to hit the trail!!!