some of you may remember a few of my other posts about me helping out a friend who bought an '88 4runner that turned into being more of a fixer upper than we thought. our latest problem is that it won't run anymore, it'll crank but not start. we checked everything that we could think of but finally gave up and took it to the local toyota mechanic (not a dealer, but a real good independant shop). anyway, the guy looked over it and said that there were two main problems: 1) the head gasket was shot, and 2) the timing belt sliped a tooth and you can imagine that that's not a good thing. we don't know how the timing belt slipped, but the previous owner was definately not too nice to this truck.

so the recommendation from the mechanic was to put a new 3vze in as there's just too much wrong with the engine and it'll be more expensive to rebuild.

after talking to my friend i found out that the 3vze that's currently in the truck isn't the original one, but was put in about 40k miles ago. so i know that the head gasket recall was on '90-'95 3vze's but this truck is an '88. however if the current engie in there is newer than an '90 then we have a chance with the toyota recall.

so question one: where's the vin on the engine? obviously the vin on the engine and truck won't match in this case.

and question two: is the recall valid on the engine if it's in a different truck?

thanks!

 

Nope.. I tried that one, I ran it on a parts truck I bought and even had friends in the dealer and I was going to see if I could pass the parts truck motor off.. If it was still in the truck, I could of had it done though..

BTW, if I remember corectly, the # is on the LT front side of the block