Well... Ol' girl is starting to show her age, I guess. Or is it?
I have 207k on this SR5 V6. Recently had the timing chain done, and after getting some serious miles out of some NGK Iridiums, I thought it was time to swap the plugs again. They were TOAST, but amazingly ran well and got decent gas mileage.
Tonight I replaced the plugs with Denso Iridium "Long Life" plugs (purchased from Advanced Auto and not cheap). Easy swap, with the exception of driver's side bank (of course), but no biggie. Gapped everything to .043 as suggested for these plugs.
Reconnected the battery and started it up. It did the usual rough idle thing until the computer caught up and then let it sit and idle for about 5, maybe 10 minutes. Ran perfect. Then I went for a drive and everything changed. It was pretty well up to temp by this time. And as soon as I put it under load I got a BIG stumble and the check engine light started flashing, VSC trac light came on, etc. Stumbled back home on less than 6 cylinders.
So, I checked my work. I went back through every plug again and checked to make sure something wasn't off. Re-torqued everything. Couldn't find anything wrong. So, I cleared out the computer (10 cycles of the key) and started it up. Ran great. Drove it around and it seemed good so I drove it down the road to put a squirt of gas in it. After getting gas, I sat for a bit idling and I noticed some strange noises coming from the ECU area (behind the glove box??). Like solenoids cycling, or something. Gremlins?? Pumped the brakes a couple times and it seemed to stop. Maybe a total coincidence and frankly, maybe it has always made these noises and I never noticed because I had music on. But, it got my attention.
Left the gas station and headed home. There is a long hill on the way home. As soon as I hit that hill and started loading up the drivetrain it started stumbling again, and by the time I got to the top I couldn't drive faster than 30-35 mph without it violently shaking. Drove it in. Parked it. Went inside defeated....
I don't have a code reader or anything to do a leak-down, so off to the shop (probably the stealership, because we're supposed to leave for a trip on Wednesday) and time is of an essence. And time is something I have basically none of, since we have a 2 month old baby and a 2 year old.
So any ideas? Did a coil pack suddenly give out when doing the plug change simply from handling it? Something ECU related? Crap plugs?? Doesn't seem like it would be a head gasket, since this came on very all of a sudden and it gets driven daily.
Let me know your thoughts. I'm fearing the worst and still trying to recover from the timing chain, so the timing (no pun intended) couldn't be worse. In fact, down right terrible timing for us.
Thanks for any input!
S