91 crate motor problems

[dennday67]

Okay little back ground on myself. I'm an industrial mechanic by trade. Auto mechanic as a hobby but mostly older muscle cars (plus two years auto tech). My coworker picked up a 91 4runner with the 3.0 v6 with a blown head gasket. The motor was half torn apart and the bottom end was shot. He got a great deal on a remand and asked if I would help install it. Now this is my first maybe second toyota I've worked on. It took us several days to install and triple check the vac lines and wire connections. Distributor was set to #1 TDC (timing belt marks aligned right). It started right up but sounded like it was running at less than 400 rpm and couldn't advance the timing any more. So we thought it was off one tooth so we moved it and now no matter what we try (even going back to #1 TDC) it wont run. We have (fresh) fuel, good spark and what we think is correct timing. We left the battery unhooked and plugs out for a few days while we tried to fig out what happened. Any help on what to check or something I'm over looking would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

 

[91'4bee]

If it was at a low RPM maybe the idle screw was too far in? What happened when ya tried to throttle it?

 

[dennday67]

Thanks for the responce. I didn't get a chance to throttle it or check the timing. He shut it down and insisted the rotor was off a tooth and we've been dead in the water ever since.

 

[KidVermicious]

Did you have the test port jumped to remove the timing advance?

 

[dennday67]

Nope. This is my first time working on a toyota. How do you do that and does it need to be jump during the entire break in?

 

[KidVermicious]

There's a diagnostic connector under the hood. I think yours is near the fuse box, don't quote me on that though. Two connections in the box are T1 and TE1 and they need jumped - use a paperclip, or a couple spade terminals on a wire, whatever. This is how you pull OBD1 codes, and this is how you take out the ECUs timing advance so you can set the timing. Set the idle (800 for 4wd, I think?), then jump those ports. You should hear the idle drop - if it doesn't, you may be looking at a bad TPS or connection on the TPS. Then hook up your gun and set your timing, aim for -5BTDC.

Gotta have it running first though. Might need to tear it down and redo the timing belt. A bad TPS wouldn't prevent the truck from starting.

 

[dennday67]

Thank you for your reply on how to setup the timing.