It more likely my stint as a member of the Village People that turned dudes gay. I was pretty sexy in that black leather biker outfit.

Contact Josh at PNW 4runner Connection. I bet he could come up with a cam seal cap for you. If you message him on Facebook, he can usually gets back to you pretty quick. If he doesn't have one, contact an engine rebuilder like Yota1 Performance in Riverbank, California. I know the owners Nick and Rebecca really well. They might me able to sell you one. They have lots spare parts at their shop. Yota1 Performance Engine & Machine - Your Toyota needs all in one place!

Umm, I went to a club called The Silo back I the day in Reading PA. Mid 90’s after I got out of the Navy). The dud was a singer in the band. Cool memory.


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Jonny Ohh and the Classic Dogs of Love was the band. They frickened rocked the house. If you was not part of the party you got hit in the head bye the WYMCA song. Holy Shit great Memory’s.


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Thanks Tim! I decided if have to go deep I’m just going to pull the engine and repower it. She runs awesome at 375k but eventually it’ll need a refresh.

Maybe its a sign that the third gen is starting to edge closer to the classic T4Rs. Most of their forums are pretty dead and gone, I guess not a lot of people want to daily a car with no side crash protection, abs, airbags, or other modern features.

The newest 3rd gens will be turning 20 next year, 3rd gens have stuck around a lot better than any generation before it but no vehicle is impervious to time (except the DeLorean)

Well, I’ve noticed a few things that people tend to do. Forums unfortunately are on decline. Which really sucks. Facebook is is just lots of noise and distractions. The crappy videos of what’s wrong with my car grind my gears also.

It not so much the features I think. Although it’s used to justify the move to a newer ride for sure. For whatever reason the masses can’t handle or doesn’t want to fix things. Older cars need a little fixing now and then. So instead of just spending a little for 1-2k for repair and maintenance, they decide that a new $600+ monthly payment all together makes more sense. The modern power that the 3rd gen doesn’t have seals the deal on the test drive. The comments of “not roomy” is what I hear most. I mean, when all the cool kids rock 3rd gen tacos, 5th gen runnners, JLURs, and double pladinum superdutys, what’s a person to do?

All I know is I’m going to be maintaining this 3rd gen for a good while. Unless Toyota builds my dream 6th gen, nothing else out there really does it for me. New rubicons are 60k+ now. 10 year old used ones are still 25k…..

Modern power and floated/locked axles around sure would be nice.

Wished I could get a 105 here. That would really solve almost all of my problems…lol.

You make a valid point but I just see way too many 3rd Gens on the roads to believe they are coming anywhere close to the 1st Gen and 2nd Gen status yet. Maybe it's just where I live. The western states are full of 3rd Gens.

I have a feeling it's more that people are going on Facebook pages more than they are going on forums. Also, when it comes down to it, people just lose interest and concentrate on other things. There was a really solid core of guys that contributed on T4R for years but a lot of them have pulled way back or have disappeared completely. I myself have fallen off from contributing to forums because I have found I get way more recognition for what I do from social media like Facebook pages and Instagram. I'll give you an example. I posted a 3.4 Engine Swap Video Series on this forum and it got some recognition rom a handful of people but not exactly what I was hoping for. I posted the same series on Toyota Enthusiast Facebook pages and the response was amazing. The forum we have the most fans of our channel is 3rd Gen Mafia. When I posted that engine swap series, it got over 1000 likes and tons of positive commentary. Knowing people appreciate what we do helps us stay motivated to keep doing it. We're making money, but it's nothing to write home about. With the time we put in, we are severely underpaid. Our favorite form of payment is hearing back from people that let us know our videos have helped them out.

When it comes time for a replacement engine, I'd recommend you consider getting one from Yota1 Performance. They do solid work.

I've suspected that but had no way to know as I 100% refuse to do social media. Having come from BBSes to Usenet to email listservs and finally Forums, things have gotten more and more dumbed down through the progression. Forums are my theshold for tolerating "dumb" and even that is a "just barely, sometimes" kind of thing. Just don't have it in me to wade through the cesspool to find the occasional bit of good info.


Plenty of us here who have used your vids and appreciated them, hard to get Constant recognition though as once you've gone through the videos and serviced the vehicle, it doesn't need much. I know no one clicks my maintenance thread link, but my thanks to you and Sean have been in there from the beginning.

I know what you mean about Social Media, but for me, it's pretty much a necessary evil to help get the word out about our videos. I also find I can help out quite a few people by contributing on those pages. There is a fair amount of stupid shit on those pages where someone asks a question and half of the answers are just people trying to be funny, but there are guys like me and others that give people straight answers in the attempt to help people out. So, I guess I take the good with the bad. I do mainly Facebook and Sean promotes our videos on Instagram.

I'm still going to contribute to this forum, I just know I've fallen off from how much I was contributing. I use to be on this forum several times a day but now I glance at it a few times a week. It just doesn't have the same feel for me anymore because of all the guys that have dropped off over time.

I absolutely understand. I used to be the admin on a forum for Kawasaki Ninja 250's, put a ton of effort over about a decade into a text-based FAQ that covered dang new Everything anyone new to motorcycles could ever want to know. Bike changed projection in 2008 and we kept it up for awhile, but social media and our reputation as being "old and curmudgeonly" (was really a no coddling, that info you're asking about is in the FAQ and here's the search link, type place). Old users left as they moved to different bikes and the model changed again in 2013 which pretty much killed it off. I check in once a month or so to clean out the trash, but the people that made the community I fell in love with, are just gone. But the beauty of forums is that the information lives on. Get someone who wants to curate every now and then and you get a compilation type post of all the Good posts that have gone before.

Things change, and it sucks to see something that you have fond memories of turn into a ghost town, but it happens. At least you know that the people here will be pointing new owners to your videos for as long as there are new people. It's timeless good content that'll be relevant even decades from now.

On a side note, you inspired me to try my hand at creating some maintenance videos for my current motorcycle, since there's nothing out there. Made me respect GOOD content like yours even more, it's not easy to do.


AAAnnnnddddd... that's enough OT for this thread for me. Sorry OP. Tim's spot on though, you've nothing to lose but the cost of the thread repair kit and some time. I've only ever done the repair at the trade school I attended in the '90s, but the engine ran fine afterwards, no loss in compression or other issues.

Another good how-to for repairing a stripped spark plug hole

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3irFj2XeCM

That's because several of us already told him to fix the head. Starts on post #35: Blew a spark plug out of the block! You're a little late to that party

Actually not late to the party Ol' Patrick. My response was Post #37 giving the OP the same advice. https://www.toyota-4runner.org/3687623-post37.html I didn't remember this previous post from the OP.

You can lead a horse to water but can't make him drink. If a shop won't do it for him and he's not confident to try it himself, I guess he's going to replace a head. But, here's the thing. If the OP isn't confident to do a job like this, how is he going to pull off a head replacement. A head replacement is way more involved than installing a helicoil or time sert. A shop is going to charge big money to replace a head. Oh well, i wish the guy luck.

By the way, I stand by my statement that the level of contribution to this forum has dropped off quite a bit. It's not nearly what it was when I got into it 6 years ago, but the big decline I noticed started around 2 years ago. It's not what it was.