Having a problem with my 96 4Runner 3.4 w/215,000 miles. For the past 9 months the engine will skip for a few seconds on start up then smooth out and run fine. For the past 3 months it has been also puffing white smoke after an overnight or a warm start. I also noticed when coolant becomes low there is no skip or smoke and when I top it off it comes back. The head gasket is probably the culprit but is it possible that the coolant is leaking into the intake and then sucked into the combustion chamber. I have no overheating issues and engine runs fine otherwise. Any input is appreciated. Thanks

 

Sounds like a HG that is slowly giving up. What you describe are the symptoms I saw as mine was starting to go. Do some searching here.....there are some good HG threads.

 

run a compression check. But as I recall, the early 95.5- early 97 motors had headgasket issues. So i would think its the culprit.

 

Thanks for the input guys. I'll do a compression check, that sounds logical. I recently looked in the book and labor hours on replacing both head gaskets was 25.1 hours plus .5 hours w/AC. Does this sound right? That's alot of labor. Replacing just intake manifold gasket is only 3.5 hours which I may try. Why would it stop smoking when gallon low.

 

The fact it's smoking and you're loosing coolant really points to a HG like the others said. I think you're wasting your time with just changing the intake manifold gasket. You'll just end up doing it again when you have to do the HGs. I would pull your spark plugs first and see if any of them have coolant on them. You can also leave them out overnight and just look down the holes to see if any coolant leaked in there by morning. I would still do the compression test too and also a leak down test if needed.