Impressive--what coolant and change interval do you use? (I went 120k and chickened out.) I'm not surprised by the belt, they hardly ever break, but that's great mileage on a WP.

 

- Toyota red coolant
- 170,000 miles

(I did install a new Toyota radiator at 200,000 miles as preventative maintenance.)





Andreas

 

223,000.........then the head gasket gave up and we swapped out the engine for a 90,000 mile one

 

Dang! Was it still red?

 

Yes.



Andreas

 

Dang indeed. When I got my 1998 3.4L at 180K miles I changed the leathery timing belt and water pump and also had to breaker-bar the original spark plugs out of the heads. The gaps were over 2x the spec but the truck ran the same and got the same MPG before and after. I replaced the fan support, rollers, etc. and also the front O2 sensor.

With an eye towards not sleeping in the woods in a broken-down truck I swapped in a low-mile alternator thought the OEM one was in decent shape, and I replaced the fuel pump and fuel filer. After the starter made a grinding noise a couple times I bought a rebuilt one, but the purchase alone seemed to be enough to get the old starter to behave and it's never acted up again so the rebuilt starter is in the shed. Recently I replaced the TPS just figuring it probably had a worn spot in it. It's cheap and easy.

The fuel pump I figure is a good prophylactic repair as when they get worn the brushes can break up and jam up the works. On the trail you can sometimes reverse the wires to get them unstuck, and then switch them back to forward and get back to town but I'm OK with just replacing it before it wears out.

Re: spark plugs you can tell they are from the factory sometimes as you might (should?) see two different brands, one on each bank. That was true in my case.

It's insane how much skipped maintenance these things will tolerate.
-Joel.