I've done some searching, but now my eyes are starting to get heavy so I'm gonna post up my questions and go to bed:

With the last 500 miles or so I have noticed that shifting gears, largle when downshifting, the truck will not want to slip into gear, but rather grind a little bit, then, if I pull to neautral then back in, it engages. If I double clutch the problem is also avoided. Is this likely the clutch itself? Could it be the slave cylinder or master cylinder? (I will check fluid level tomorrow). Lastly, if it turns out that i need a new clutch, what is a repair shop likely to charge me for the whole job? (I started reading throught the haynes manual, I think it might be too much for me).

Oh, the truck has 196K on it, I got it with 129K so its got at least 67,xxx miles on it, probably way more than that (not much in the way of previous service records).
thanks everyone.
Ian
Oh yeah, its in the sig, but, this is for me 97 3.4L 4wd tacoma.

 

oh man, it is sooo tempting to edit your thread title

 

hahahahaha

 

Oh man, I hope bad typing doesn't scare the useful info way...

 

ian,

bow down to the merciful mod! it was sooooooo tempting!

bob

 

Out of curiosity, what did it say?

And my rig has been doing the same thing. It has 110K on the original clutch, so Im thinking it might be time.

 

I spoke to a shop manager (who I don't particularly trust, but what the hell, I didn't give him any money-for this) and he said that the double clutching made him think it was the master cylinder and or slave cylinder. I finally did a check on the fluid in the (clitch) clutch resevoir, it looks low, but I didn't notice a fill line. Its hard to see tho since its so dusty. I am gonna clean off the cap and top it off, see if that helps. If it does, I'll just watch it and see if it goes down quickly. On a positive note, replacing these parts seems way more manageable than the clutch itself.

Side questions: How much life have folks gotten from their toyota clutches?