Good evening folks.

I have been a member here for some time. Few years ago I bought an 80 series and still working on it. Along the way rebuilt the engine myself and overjoyed about the way she runs.

Now, I have to buy my son a new 1st gen Taco after a pretty nasty roll over that he walked away with just a small cut on his finger. Trouble is, finding one that is in good condition with lower mileage at a decent price. Long story short, been over 6 months and really not finding anything. I am now strongly finding one that has a very good strait body and interior and just planning on rebuilding the engine. No matter what I would have dumped an easy grand in it to baseline it once purchased.

As I am an Ih8mud member, and they are a wealth of knowledge over there, I am pretty ignorant on the Tacos but have wrenched on my sons old one quite a bit. It was too bad to on his, he had 166k on his and mechanically, it was VERY sound....

Anyway, as you are the experts, I am looking into the cost. I plan on using only Toyota parts (part of being a cruiser snob) but not sure what the 3.4 costs would be for a complete rebuild IE. New pistons, bearings and reusing the cranks and cams provided they look good. Rebuild of the heads is a must. Thinking of just getting a Toy shortblock for about $2.3k.

As 150k trucks in good condition are running $14k plus here, I think I could pick up a decent bodied truck for about 9K.

Well, what do you folks think?

 

Well 1 thing is for sure, you can buy a low milage 5vz-fe anywhere there is snow pretty easily as many ended up at the scrap yard for the frame recall, as you know the 3.4L by Hino maybe 1 of the longest lasting V6 petrol motors out there, rarely requiring a rebuild until well past the life of the vehicle, and they perform well even with high milage, so spare yourself the work and pick up a low milage motor or JDM and swap the manifolds over to USDM, you will be hard pressed to rebuild it as well as they built it originally at Hino, originally designed for industrial use, and you'll have the same thing in the end if all goes perfectly. Finding the truck under 9K will be difficult, finding a decent crew cab 4x4 with e-locker will be even harder, since your good with wrenching you should look for a Taco with issues, perhaps it will have low milage for that reason. I did find these motors readily available and fairly easy to remove and replace.

 

Might be worth it to Check Out Tacoma World if you have not done so .

The thing with the bought back trucks they all got crushed makes it hard finding Tacoma parts.

Much easier finding 3.4 engines from 4Runners .

 

Most motors, transmissions and differentials got pulled before they crushed them in Canada as they have valuable metals in them worth more assembled in good shape with low milage so you will find them on every shelf in almost every wrecker in Canada, and they are also worth more as valuable metals, and almost every wrecking yard uses a Taco as the Yard truck in Canada, the majority of Tacos exposed to Canadian winters got the buy out and where scrapped, probably the best sales move Toyota ever did in the history of automotive sales.