badbone

So I had a weird problem with my 1998 Tacoma, even the dealer mentioned it was a problem that they never heard of before. It cost me a ton of money to change a few sensors to finally nail down the root cause. My engine would sporadically stall and even die out in the freeway twice. On the streets a few times. The temperature gauge would go up and stay up as if the engine was overheating, but it wasn't. Performance would diminish and it would behave as if it was misfiring. The truck has 196,000 miles so I figured maybe a sensor went bad. It was the stupid aftermarket alarm that was installed at the dealer when I originally bought it brand new 13 years ago. The Karr alarm was causing so much problem that it was corrupting the computer signals. Well I wanted to post this message, as I searched online for similar problems and I was not able to find one similar issue from anybody.

Symptoms:
- Sporadic loss of power
- Temperature gauge would go up and down suddenly
- Temperature gauge would stay up on red and engine would shutdown
- Check engine light and seat belt light would stay ON and stay ON even after the key was removed from the ignition.
- Temperature gauge would remain up on RED even after the engine was shutdown and key removed from ignition.

Root Caused:
- Aftermarket alarm (Karr) that was installed at the dealer went bad. Once the entire unit was removed, the Tacoma was back to normal.