"Bare with me, this is kind of long but hope this helps to diagnose my problem."
I recently did a timing chain replacement on my 88' 4Runner and everything went well for the past several weeks. I MADE sure I torqued everything down accordingly to the FSM. Last night as I was fiddling with my truck cause the positive cable to the starter was shot, I noticed something strange about the crank pulley....the bolt was missing! God knows how long I have been running it that way cause I remember torquing it down to 116 lbs and I couldn't fathom the idea of how it would come off so easily.
Anyhow, found a replacement bolt, placed the car in 4th gear, torqued it down to 116 lbs again but this time I felt something move as I was waiting to hear the "click" from the torque wrench and without thinking I kept on proceeding until I torqued it down correctly. Well, I went over to fire it up after the bolt was torqued down and my truck now can't start. Keeps on turning but won't fire.
So I stopped what I was doing and checked to make sure crank was at TDC ("0"), and repositioned the distributor rotor to #1 position and when that was done, fired her up again and still no start? Did I somehow skipped a tooth or something when I torqued the bolt to the crank pulley? It's late but I plan on taking the valve cover off tomorrow in the morning to check to make sure that the cam is set properly on the timing chain. Any suggestions or help point me in the right direction would be greatly appreciated, thx yota community.

 

When I turn the crank pulley, should the rotor from the distributor be moving along with each turn I move it? I can't remember if it should or not because as of now I can't get it to turn when I crank the pulley.

 

Ok, upon removal of the valve cover, I noticed the chain was loose, went ahead to move it and ended up EASILY taking the whole chain out. Damn, two weeks of driving my truck and this happens again all over again. Just hope I didn't do any major damage when I was trying to start my truck....such a headache.

 

Wow.

DO let us all know what happened. It's hard for me to see what would make the timing chain loose. (But then, mine is a 3VZE with a belt.)

 

Good luck, my brother.

And...yes...when you turn the crankshaft pulley, the rotor inside the distributor should rotate as well.

 

Well, my answer to you would be that I believe I torqued it down correctly BUT, I made the mistake of not locking the pulley up with a locking chain rod for the pulley and instead used the gears to lock that crank shaft in place, which ended up snapping that chain and lower sprocket.

Yes, I could have recalled that awhile back but forgot, thx for the info.

 

So what turned out to be a headache only turned out to be a nightmare. After replacing the timing chain, scraping off the old gasket with new gaskets and sealant, it turned out to be a PITA to put the timing chain cover on cause the oil pan was still bolted up, which leaves me little to no room to place the cover on. After an hour of messing with it, I ended up bending a part of the head gasket....."CRAP." I tried to salvage it, going back to basics and taking off the oil pan....20 mins later after flushing coolant and oil out from the oil pan and removing all the bolts, I took the pan off and only to realize and see a white milky substance running along the oil pan, which lead me to believe the head gasket is fried.
I really wanted to ignore that cause I felt that I wasted enough time cause this is my DD!! My buddy, who was helping me, told me that if I wanted it done right, don't half ass it and do it right the first time. So what started off to be a crank pulley bolt problem lead to a broken timing chain, sprocket, and head gasket.
Time to do a clean up, here are some pics of the progress of before and after:
Head off the block

Cleaning the valve and head

After the cleaning of the valves and head

Dirty carbon build up block and pistons

Clean and polished up block after clean up

Really hope to get her up and running for a very long time after this nightmare is over with! I'll post pics up of the progress as I go but I'm counting on finishing this up in a few days as I'll have to work in between my job and this so it's gonna take a little more time vs getting it all done in a day.