Hi everyone, I just purchased a 1995 Toyota Pickup DLX ext. cab MT with the 3.0LV6 3VZE Engine. So, originally I was in the market for a weekend beater pickup since we gave our daughter our 2010 Camry to take to college in Florida. As such, we were a one car family (I have a company work van, but that doesn’t count) I was looking at older Tacomas originally, but then discovered the pre-Tacoma pickups. I was instantly hooked! I quickly discovered how rare and expensive these trucks are in decent condition. I found one at a dealer that had 182,000 miles and some rust but the dealer was in the process of replacing some body panels, tailgate and bumper. The engine, frame, and interior were all in good condition. Clean CARFAX and one owner, plus the engine was not included in the head gasket recall for those model years. I took the plunge, gave my deposit, and will be picking the truck up this Saturday. I’ve already spoken to a tech at my local Toyota dealer who used to own a 93 and has plenty of experience with the 3VZE. Basically, I want to have all of the factory scheduled maintenance items done since I don’t have a maintenance history on the truck. Also, this will give me a benchmark for future maintenance. Off the top of my head, I wanted to do a valve adjustment, timing belt and water pump, plugs, wires, and fluids. My mechanic kind of balked at doing too much. His philosophy is, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. He said if you start taking stuff apart, you take the chance of disturbing the works and causing more problems. Should I push the issue? Or should I just have him take care of anything that is an obvious problem? What do you guys think?

 

If you have records, sure don’t fix it but not knowing anything this is your call and money, that philosophy works with some things but scheduled maintenance is so it doesn’t break and why these trucks can treat you really well if you maintain and take care of them.

Lots of unknowns to give you a direction to go, personally doing the things you mentioned won’t all the sudden blow everything up but again your money and your call

 

Welcome to the old Toyota Truck family!

While there is the possibility of disturbing something, chances are, whatever might get disturbed probably needed some maintenance or needed to be replaced anyway.

The items you listed off (timing belt, water pump, spark plugs, distributor cap and rotor, Spark plug wires, valve adjustment, fluid changes) are just normal maintenance items.

If this were my Truck, I would do the same, unless you know that they were recently done.

One thing you may have noticed while browsing the forum is that Genuine Toyota parts are really the best for keeping your Truck reliable, even things like spark plug wires.

I would have the technician look over the Truck and see if there are any pressing issues that should be taken care of immediately.

 

Thanks old87yota. I spoke with the mechanic again and he was more concerned about replacing head gaskets unnecessarily, not the other things that I mentioned. Fortunately, after running my vin, my truck didn’t fall under the head gasket recall so that, at least seems ok to leave alone. Meanwhile, I will certainly have him perform all of the other maintenance items that I mentioned. I’ll post some pics as soon as I get my hands on her!