My friend Kyle (hellonweels89) and I finally got his new 3VZE engine to run, except it runs realllly rough and dies if the throttle isnt kept up. Also, the pleneum gets extremely hot really quick. There is a weird smell too, like a cross between gas and melting plastic. There are new wires and plugs in the engine. The check engine light is on as well. When the key is turned to the on position you can hear the fuel pump turn on but there is also another sound, like leaking air, coming from the passenger side of the engine bay. Any ideas for things to start checking? Thanks!

 

check the codes, determine what the motor is complaining about.
Have a vac leak? That'd be my guess.

 

sounds like fuel leak. the leaking air sound could be the fuel pressure leaking somewhere. try to find the noise. pull the code for the check engine light. the melting plastic smell is all of the new sealant and gaskets cooking off. no big deal.

 

I think you are right Toyoholic, we did find this weird fuel line looking peice that we didn't know what to do with. I'll take a picture and see if anybody knows where it goes. How do I find out the code? Do I need to to take it to a Toyota Dealership??

 

Also, is there any explanation for the hot pleneum? Or is it supposed to get that hot that quick?

 

diagnostic terminal, it's in the engine bay. i don't know where it's at on the 3.0. take a wire or paper clip and jump the t and e1 terminals. the check engine light will flash the codes by the number of blinks and the amount of time between the flashes. use the fsm link in the other thread and the emisions section for the 3.0 will explain in more detail and show the codes.
how fast are you talking about the plenum getting hot? mine gets hot, but not immediately.

 

indeed. the plenum should warm up with the engine....

check the distributor timing too...


The diagnostic port is going to be next to the fuse gang on the passenger side of the truck under the hood...

 

I don't know about your particular smell...I know I had a melt-down on my fan blower wires...bad,bad, bad smell. Good luck!

 

We tested for engine codes and got 24 and 32.

32 is an issue with the airflow meter in the airbox. We opened it up and the air flap was pivoting extremly rough, probably from when Kyle killed the old engine and flooded it with water. It supposed to be able to move from the airflow, which was def not happening. This explains why it couldn't rev up high, the door metering the airflow was stuck and the computer did not know the correct air/fuel to use. There are also two wires that got unsodered from the sensor that we are sodering back on. We WD-40ed the door hinge and now it moves freely. Hopefully this fixes this issie.

24 was about the air temp sensor. Does anyone know where this is? I'm guessing its part of the airflow meter since we see a little sensor in there with two wires. It needs a new air tempt sensor so we might just end up gettig a whole new air flow meter if that air temp sensor is a part of that.

The two above codes were issues that caused the car not to be able to rev up high and caused a slighy wobble in idling. The next issue caused an extremely rough idle/dieing engine until fixed.

We also had our friend come over who is the head mechanic at a reputable shop and after 30 seconds of looking at it running rough he pulled a small vacuum tube off the EGR and poof! Idles like its a brand new car. He said the EGR is getting vacuum that it shouldnt when idleing, meaning that we either put the vacuum hoses backtogether wrong or the solinoid for the EGR is broken.

Its awesome to see this project wind up, the thing died on January 7th (we still have the Hollister sticker on the window with the date) and we've been busting our asses on and off since then dealing with problem after problem. But we've learned a lot and would def do it again! I'll keep ya'll posted with how we get this sucker running good.

 

Heres a picture of our custom grill
The front body was slightly bent prior to the old engine dieing in an accident so the grill dosnt fit/cracked. We have a new one but need to bend the body so the mounts line up again.

 

my engine was getting really hot before I had the timing set right. It was off 1 tooth on the camshafts. After fixing that it's not as hot.

 

heck yeah! it's running. it's nice to have expert buddies. if it wasn't for mine my truck would still be sitting in my driveway.
my afm was messed up somehow as well and when we first got it running it would only run for a few seconds then die. don't know what it is about these afm's but seems like gremlins like to get in them during rebuilds?

 

We drove it around town today, stopped by Kyle's girlfriend's house who thought we were still trying to get it started! Talk about being suprised. We also drove it to our old Auto Teacher's shop from high school. We started this project last year but I was senior then and school was out before we finished. The teacher thoguht it was too big of a project and would never work!! We showed him!! He was very proud and of course found a power steering leak that we quickly sealed up with some teflon tape. That thing has got some guts compared to my ol' 22-re '86. We still need to get the timing dead on, we should be doing that tomorrow. Thanks a ton for all the help!