2nd gen help

[Fatnslow]

Hello all! I am new to the forums and I am looking for some quick help.

My wife has a 95 V6 AT 4runner and it has been a tank so far. Lately, we have had a few issues pop up. I am not familiar with 4runners and I couldn't find much via the search. Here are the issues:

1. I don't know if it is the just the tachometer, but sometimes the RPMs jump to like 4k and then it goes to 0 while the vehicle is running. The engine does not appear to be in sync with the gauge so I don't think the engine uber rev'ed and then stalled. This happened this weekend. Any thoughts?

2. She had one instance where her 4runner almost stalled at a traffic light. Last year, we replaced a clogged cat and it didn't happen again until a week or two ago.

3. The car doesn't like to downshift when we go up hills. The RPMs will continue to decrease and it doesn't want to downshift most of the time. Putting the cruise control on does help (sometimes). This normally isn't an issue until we are going up I-70 in the mountains and we are going 30 MPH on the interstate where the speed limit is 65-75

4. Just today, the car wouldn't start. Normally, I would imagine a dead battery, but the battery appears to be fine. I was able to get all lights illuminated and was able to roll up/down windows just fine. No flickers or anything. The engine was not turning over so I thought that it must be the starter. I pulled the starter fuse but I don't have an ohm meter to test it. I will replace the fuse and see if that is the issues and check to see if the wire to the starter is disconnected or cut. If that isn't it...bad starter or something else?

When it rains, it pours....

-Fatty

 

[crash813]

Welcome Fatty,

Lots of random and vague things here. Unfortunately, you're just going to have to work at one spot and troubleshoot things. Vehicles this age can definitely start to have gremlins especially with old electronics and connectors.

Here's my 1st round of rough guesses:
1) tach is an electrical sender so either the sender is going bad, a bad ground, or a short somewhere. Tough to start but first thing I would do is upgrade your main grounds. Battery to chassis, chassis to engine. I always find that teeny tiny factory cabling plus old age = bad grounds = all kinds of crazy unexplained stuff going on.

2) stalling....no telling. Its OBDII so get a reader and pull a code. It should point you in a direction. Vacuum leaks, misfires, bad plugs, restricted flow, ....the code will get you in a direction.

3) When was the last time you flushed the trans fluid? If its been awhile, I'd do that first. Then I would just manually downshift when you need to or when it gets hilly, hit the ECT power button. That will raise the rpm shift points and kept it from going into overdrive.

4) Any starter noise at all? If not, then its either the starter or the ignition switch. These cars have a known issue with the ign switch in their old age due to too much voltage through the circuit. You can replace or wire in a fix. If you search here, you'll find several threads on it.

See if any of that can help you get started. On the trickier ones, search the forum and if still nothing, post issues one at a time. You'll generally get better responses that way.

 

[Fatnslow]

Thank you for the tips. It looks like I got my summer work cut out for me.

For #4, it ended up being the security system. We are not sure how it activated, but it tripped and prevented us from starting the starter. I noticed that the alarm system went off as soon as I reconnected the battery so I thought to re-arm and disarm the system. I love easy fixes.