Originally Posted by JohnMc

I'm guessing this one: 1998 Toyota 4Runner (rust free)(low miles) - cars & trucks - by owner - vehicle automotive sale

It's 'concerning' that he bought it with misfires, replaced the t-belt, and it still runs the same way. So he didn't cause the crappy running with a botched t-belt install, something else was pre-existing.

Could be that someone did a headgasket and really did a lousy job. Leaking compression on all 3? Seems like that would be hard to do. Maybe a more likely thing would be to have misaligned the gears between the intake and exhaust cams. On one head you align them dot to dot, on the other you you have to align dot to two dots (IIRC, it's been a bit). Someone doing a quicky shade tree fix might have gotten that wrong, tried to fix it without knowing the issue, this guy bought it and did a TB on it as a hail mary, that didn't work, now looking for a third owner to triple down on the parts cannon.

Might be worth a bit of a gamble. It is just very unlikely that all 3 cylinders on the same side would have a serious bottom end issue (rings, bores, piston).