'95 4Runner bad crankshaft???
 

While I was my '95 4Runner stopped running. I did not hear any sound that may indicate that something was broken in the engine. I took the vehicle to the local shop and they replace the distributor and the resistor copper plug. After they did that the vehicle had "intermittent spark" but would not start. They removed crankshaft sensor and found "damage caused from debris behind the cover". They indicated that something inside the engine may be broken, possibly the crankshaft or worst! For this job they want to charge me over $3,000 and if they find something else it may be more!

Is anyone familiar with this problem? Is it worth to repair? How much money should I spend repairing it?

What engine do you have?

I am going to assume you have a 3VZ..

Sounds like you have your vehical at the wrong shop...Its easy to test a distributor if you know what you are doing...throwing parts at it,ie distributor,tells me they do not know what they are doing.distributors rarely fail..Toyota's are not like domestics in this regard..

I highly doubt your crankshaft is broken...If they suspect there are problems behind the front cover(timing cover) It takes about an hour to tear it down and inspect what's going on...

Either they are unwilling to do a quick teardown and they want to scare you out of the shop...$3k estimate..............Or they are basically pricing you an engine rebuild for 3k,because they are not willing or/able to diagnose the vehical properly...........Either way..still comes down to You are at the wrong shop....

Another thing is the engine in your vehical is 15yrs old,weather its a 4 or 6...whatever is wrong with it,the engine has been out there so long that whatever is wrong with it,it has been seen before by tons of techs...so someone throwing parts at it at this point again leads me to believe you are at the wrong shop.....

Proceede with caution with these guys.....

Yeah, I'd get my vehicle out of there, at least for a second opinion. If it is a 3VZE, I wouldn't put that kind of money into it. I probably wouldn't spend $500 on a 3VZE.

BTW you really should post over here (https://www.yotatech.com/forums/f116/) if you have a 3VZE:

wrong shop, I agree fully with previous statements.

Definitely is the wrong shop. The engine that I have is a 4-2695 2.7L DOHC 4 Cylinder, 2WD. This is a great SUV I would hate 2 get rid of if, but between towing, parts and labor I do not know if it will be worth fixing it. I’m going to get a second opinion to see how much it can be. I hate to go to a shop that the only thing they do is just guess what’s wrong with the vehicle. In this shop I ended up paying $660 (parts and labor) for a distributor that may not even needed to be replaced.

On the same note I took the Runner to W**mart the same day the incident happened, I wonder if they let something loose and when I accelerated the vehicle it stopped running!