91 Xtra Cab w/ 3vze 4x4 manual shift. Been dealing with this truck for a year now. My friend bought it new and after the 2nd head gasket went i bought it from him. I had it fixed and gave it to my dad. He died and it's mine again. It suffers from lack of power. I did a compression check and a leak down test. Here are the results.

Compression
1- 120
3 - 30
5 - 120
2 - 115
4 - 115
6 - 110

Leak down
1 - 48% out the intake
3 - 60% out the intake
5 - 40% out the valve cover
2 - 45% out the valve cover
4 - 30% out the valve cover
6 - 50% out the valve cover

I used a long screw driver to find tdc on the pistons. So my question is is it the block or just time for new head gaskets. I'm going to fix the truck for my son who is getting his license. I just need to know what direction to go.

Thanks.

 

Could try doing a valve adjustment first then recheck compression, at least check check valve clearance and see if the shims need to be changed/swapped. How many miles are on the truck? With it popping two head-gaskets I'm dubious about damage to the head/block since it probably got hot at least once when it popped the HG but a machine shop could tell you for sure.

 

It's got 272k on it. Toyota did all three head gasket jobs so i can only assume they did it correctly, but that was 20 some years ago the last one was done. Luckily we do have a good machine shop in town that i took the heads of our 88 4runner to. It was fairly cheap and the shop does good work. I guess i need to learn how to check the valve clearances.

Thanks!!

 

If this is the first HG pop since those original warranty replacements, I wouldn't be as worried about damage to the block from multiple failures. Won't know till you get the heads off, but I wouldn't be too concerned about it just yet.
As suggested, you could check valve lash first. You are gonna have to remove all that upper intake stuff to get to the passenger side valve cover, and once you do that you are 90% done with what has to be removed to get the heads off. So it is not a waste of time.
I will warn you that checking valve lash is easy enough once you get it apart. Adjusting it by replacing the shims is a cuss fest, but I've learned a couple of tricks that make it go 10 times faster now. I will write it up one of these days, because I haven't seen all of these tips in the same place before, but feel free to ping me with any questions if you go that route.

 

I put a new water pump (it was leaking out the weep hole) in it last summer and it's not loosing coolant as far as I can tell, but it wasn't driven that much since. It had power issues then too. Not sure if my dad had a HG problem after I gave it to him. He used to drive to Denver every 3 months and had to stop and let it cool down on the passes.

I pulled the intake off this summer and replaced the valve cover gaskets and cleaned the injectors so I've already been there.

If it's not raining this weekend I'll see about the valve clearances.

Thanks !!