Thanks, I appreciate it!
We made the 5,989 mile trip, and I'd like to say with no issues, but I did have a snag. I had been disapointed with the power and fuel economy on the new engine, and head since I first installed it, but just blew it off as expecting too much. We left out from Winston Salem on a Friday afternoon around 4pm heading West. By the time we had gotten to Arkansas, the 4runner was not idling well, then by Oklahoma it wouldn't idle below 2k rpms. I stopped in OK City and checked all the basics, and they checked good. We continued on until in Amarillo TX, it wouldn't restart. :wtf: Finally got it started back, and
limped it to Gallup NM where we rested from 5AM to 9AM. We had our fingers crossed as we drove North to Moab where we had been planning on spending a few days soaking up the gorgeous scenery while wheeling. By this point, the starter could no longer spin the motor fast enough for it to fire, so it was getting the push-rope treatment whenever we stopped.
Moab was everything we expected, and more. It was gorgeous, fun, and freaking hot. The temps were a cool 105 during the days.
I limped it through White Rim Trail, and continued on to Colorado. At this point, I knew it was low on compression, but was afraid there was some other reason. I had thoughts of bad ecu, bad, injectors, ...... Some reason
for a failure on a brand new OEM Toyota short block, or a new Engnbldr head.
While in Ouray, CO we were very fortunate to have other friends there we could ride with on the trails. During our first scheduled trail run, we again were fortunate enough for the leader to be the owner of Safari Ltd in Grand Junction CO. He was awesome enough to stop by and check behind me on the 4runner to make sure everything was as I envisioned in my head. Yep, no compression, but not from a vehiclular issue such as ecm or otherwise. I had already called and spoken with Engnbldr, and was told I would need to ship the head back for it to be inspected, repaired, and then shipped back to me, but they had no new heads available for purchase, or exchange. This put me in a bind, as I was 2500 miles, and another week from my vacation being over.
Colin in Safari's parts dept got me a new remanufactured head inbound and in hand a day faster than I expected. I arrived at Safari knowing they had a full work load, and then some, and wouldn't be able to get to me for a day or so. The owner once again being an awesome guy, offered to let me use his parking lot for the cylinder head swap. I took him up on it, and had it running that afternoon. After checking it over for leaks, timing etc, it was time to hit the road again. We picked our family's and broke camp heading North on to
Yellowstone National Forest.
to be continued...