[SOLVED: see below] Short end, CEL: p0133, p0130, p0330... knock sensors have signal and are new and fresh. O2 sensor good brand new, fuel injectors cleaned and checked running solid, fuel filter replaced, MAF running properly.

[SOLVED] driving symptoms: weak power above 3000 rpm, sputters and coughs when you floor it, all around feels like it runs lean.

[SOLVED] Longer story with more detail: Holy cow, I loved my 1995 4runner. Casey Jones we called him. Masked vigilante and best friend of the ninja turtles. 2 12in sub woofers in the back installed by the prior owner with blue tooth, leather seats and a rearview camera. Whoo doggy! I bought him at 240k miles about 6 years ago and proceeded to drive him all over the southwest. Absolutely fell in love with it standing on the tailgate, sunrising behind me, looking at waves peeling right and picking breaks. Surfs up my dude. Then the A/T started slipping, and the 3.0 blew a heater hose and overheated. The truck became a problem child. But this is CASEY JONES!!! Can't just give up on'im. Fast forward life a bit and I'm out of the financial situation that stopped me from keeping that truck running and it's time to bring Casey Jones back to life. Bought a JDM import 99 3.4L off a Toyota Hi-ace (why dont we have these in the US!!!) Snagged a junkyard working M/T, a 1997 4x4 M/T Runner ECM, and with the wife's permission an ORS wiring harness. Sick, let's do this. 8 months later and some annoyed in-laws (I was using their garage. This a San Diego problem. Garages aren't really a thing) Casey Jones lives again!!! Now I'm trying to pass smog, but I've got the CEL which is a smog death sentence, plus it drives like ˟˟˟˟ past 20 miles an hour. Check engine lights are the knock sensor right bank, and a slow O2 sensor/bad circuit. Actually had a mechanic fix the knock sensors for me for too much money. Only after that i discovered the ORS wiring harness had been wired wrong at the knock harness and i had to repin it. (Despite the mistake those guys do epic work) Still throwing a p0330, and i can confirm 100, that the knock works. As for the p0133 and p0139 the upstream O2 sensor is a slightly different issue, bought a Bosch O2 from rock auto for a 99 and dropped it in, but the clip was different. I didn't think too much of it and just used the old clip and swapped the wires out. (It has since occurred to me the 99 O2 is sending signals to a 97 ecm and yota may have changed something there. They did that with the MAF, so why not an O2. Either way I haven't had a chance to check it yet.) Also, The truck occasionally throws a "running too lean" pending code while i drive it but have not found a way to consistently produce it.

So now, like I mentioned above, the truck sputters on aggressive acceleration and struggles at highway speeds which are higher rpm. As an aside, this problem is exacerbated by the fact that im running 28.5 " tires on this thing and the 97 ECM wants me in 31s so my speedo is about 8% off and the rpms are absolutely cranking at the neccessary California highway speeds of "dont get run over" miles per hour. All in all, I'm stumped. Next step in my head is drop the fuel tank and swap the pump, but that's alot of work or money I don't really have so I'd love to exhaust some other possibilities first. Hopefully y'all have some solid ideas or comments for me, cause I'm stuck.

Thanks in advanced anyone that has any ideas.
[SOLVED: TLDR - vacuum leaks everywhere]

Inlaws garage

Who needs a hood scoop when you've got a 4lb deadblow and some sandbags

Goongala!!

Pretty much set up. Though you'll see a hopeful cruise control thats now gone.

 

Quick update: snagged a fuel pressure gauge and checked that. 44 PSI both before and in the middle of the fuel rail. (FYI: that's high end of spec for the FSM) So not the fuel pump. Swapped positions 1 and 2 on the EB1 connector (which would throw a p0325 instead of a p0330 if the car was knocking or the knock sensor was bad) and the code was still P0330. So double-checked engine harness connectivity by disconnecting the ECM plug and grounding position 3 and gave it a good wiggle. No sign of connection issues. Went and looked at the O2 sensor and noticed that the flange didn't properly fit on the fitting so that further makes me thing the O2 sensor is the wrong one. A buddy installed it while I did something else, which is why it ended up there in the first place. Went and returned the rented fuel pressure gauge to the auto-parts store and the thing drove rather well. I kept it mellow on the way there and never had the CEL come back on. No surprise since I kept RPMs below 2500. Autoparts shop is through a neighborhood, so it wasn't too hard. Hopped back in and the CEL was on immediately, but I drove it back with gusto anyway. No sputter when I floored it or ran up into the 4000 rpm range. Got back home and no P0330; tentative success. Grabbed another O2 sensor and I am gonna install it in the morning to a cool intake and drive it to work. We'll see.

Further Update: Knock sensor seems to be solved. O2 sensor seems to be solved with the new one. Now the engine is occasionally throwing a pending P0171 running lean signal, but it's hard to get it to be consistent, CA smog on Monday. So to end the thread, problem solved... jiggle the wires and use the correct O2 sensor. Silly lesson to learn there.

 

Further update on the truck as a whole, don't confuse your ECM with mismatched CA and Federal gear. Most of my lean code stuff was classic vacuum leaks but were hard to find as reusing old vacuum hoses made most of the seals leak a little, plus a hair line cracked MAF and a leaking brake booster seal meant the whole thing was just sucking air all over the place and made a butane test pretty useless. Drove 4000 miles up the California coast and back with the thing acting like a highschool girlfriend. (periodic irrational fits of abysmal performance, jiggle some stuff, then happy as can be) That drive is when I found the MAF, the vacuum hoses all leaking and fixed most of it. Still had a periodic angry truck and couldn't quite figure it out. Ended up Seafoaming the truck (via vacuum line) at one point on the road and boy that stuff sure does do weird and amazing things. Placebo maybe, but it's cheap enough to not care. Eventually, I realized I was running a cheap federal catalytic converter on a CA spec ECM and as such the emissions committee (upstream o2 sensor, downstream 02 sensor, and MAF) could not agree on what the hell the engine was doing. I replaced the federal cat with a Walker CARB-legal California Cat and now the truck is as happy as can be as far as I can tell. Now onto the eventual re-gearing the diff, locking hubs, and reinstalling a working A/C. You know, once COVID is done and I have a job again.

Side note: Don't tell California smog folks that you used a JDM engine or a custom wiring harness, they'll automatically fail you. Tell em you got the engine out of a California Toyota a friend owned and hopefully that friend owns a 4runner you can hijack the VIN number from, and you just adapted the harness that came stock with the ECM you're using. It's a stupid dance. Do make sure you have CARB legal intake parts and a CARB legal exhaust system (cat included). They look for the CARB Executive Order numbers for those parts and you won't pass without em.

Also, pictures! Rad Yosemite picture, the truck in all its glory just outside of the redwoods, and then a super cool shifter boot a friend made for the truck.



Just outside of Redwoods in NorCal

Gotta have a splash of color

The whole point of the truck

 

Truck update! Now a year later. The truck has been running great in general. I put an Eaton Trutrac (and manual locking hubs) into the front and re-geared the truck from 4.88 to 4.11, plus a complete overhaul on suspension with new lower control arm bushings, new upper control arms, rear springs, and brand new shocks on everything. A/C is in and running properly. Also, swapped out my rigged intake to a CARB legal K&N to make the DMV happy.

Ran into a catastrophic failure, when the camshaft timing gear bolt sheered off and destroyed some pistons in Big Sur. Found an awesome mechanic in San Luis Obisbo who swapped the JDM engine out and put in a 5 year warrantied long block. (holy ˟˟˟˟˟ was that expensive, thank god I'm employed again.)
It's worth noting, if you get a JDM, tear the engine down to the pistons and put it back together so you know it's correct. The mechanic in SLO said his best guess for failure was a quick timing belt job or camshaft job where they used a pneumatic gun to retorque the bolt instead of the slower more correct way with a manual torque wrench and the specific camshaft nut tightening tool from Toyota. So over time the bolt slowly came out until it snagged.

There's still a pesky problem: the truck runs up to 230+ degrees under load or up hills. I can crank the heater and get it down to about 225, but still too hot for my liking. It also struggles on long highway hills. My wife and I had a painfully hot summer drive out to Arizona running the heater with the windows down to keep the truck from overheating. Thankfully that was the "let's install the A/C at my parent's house" drive, so the way back was much nicer. Helps it was more or less downhill going back to CA.

So the next future task is to install an OEM oil cooler and see if that helps out the overheating. I'll report back as there's a Death Valley trip coming up, and will be a good test to see how it does.

Lost the spare tire getting outclassed in Utah

locking hubs to be able to keep the trutrac from always spinning the front driveshaft. Plus they feel cool

fancy paint job for the new(to me) diff.

Big Sur

More Big Sur, before the catastrophic failure

that's a grade 10 bolt that twisted itself off

Camshaft timing gear just didn't wanna stay attached. The whole failure was rather anti-climatic as the truck just sputtered out.

 

More photos! with various stories around them.


The trip to Arizona was also to build a tool drawer for camping and mechanic tools.

Look at that big rock! Obviously this is an overlander build, and not hunting for giant rock gardens to crawl around in.

Fun trail into a slot canyon to go look for dinosaur tracks.

When I swapped my suspension I forgot to clip the O2 sensor harness back to the frame so I melted the wires, and had the truck spazz on me in Utah. I bandaged it up until I could do a more permanent fix.