missyroar
New member
I haven't been here since 2016, back when I had my 2nd gen SR5.
Last weekend I picked up my first 3rd gen. An '01 Sport Edition with 303K miles.
I bought it not running. The seller said it had a full rebuild on the heads and timing belt were done at 260K from a shop. It started throwing misfire codes and he started replacing sensors, chasing ghosts... almost every sensor on this rig has been replaced with cheap aftermarket junk. The seller admitted to doing cheap repairs whenever he could. He said it started running worse, and was getting around 6mph before the engine finally just gave up.
Before buying it, a quick look showed that the timing belt was already falling apart and there was zero compression when attempting to turn it over.
Once home, we got to work tearing it down. The timing belt got chewed up because the water pump pulley was failing and walking the timing belt off the other pulleys. It had zero compression because the timing jumped and was off. After replacing the timing belt and water pump and fixing the timing, we fired it up and it ran.... like garbage.
Cylinder 5 was dead. Then we were concerned if this was a top end or bottom end issue. Took the heads off and uhh..... the valves were toasted.
We found another 3.4L engine with OEM heads, and took those to a machine shop to re-do. We get the heads back this weekend. Just need new injectors and to put everything back together and hopefully we'll get on the road soon!
Last weekend I picked up my first 3rd gen. An '01 Sport Edition with 303K miles.
I bought it not running. The seller said it had a full rebuild on the heads and timing belt were done at 260K from a shop. It started throwing misfire codes and he started replacing sensors, chasing ghosts... almost every sensor on this rig has been replaced with cheap aftermarket junk. The seller admitted to doing cheap repairs whenever he could. He said it started running worse, and was getting around 6mph before the engine finally just gave up.
Before buying it, a quick look showed that the timing belt was already falling apart and there was zero compression when attempting to turn it over.
Once home, we got to work tearing it down. The timing belt got chewed up because the water pump pulley was failing and walking the timing belt off the other pulleys. It had zero compression because the timing jumped and was off. After replacing the timing belt and water pump and fixing the timing, we fired it up and it ran.... like garbage.
Cylinder 5 was dead. Then we were concerned if this was a top end or bottom end issue. Took the heads off and uhh..... the valves were toasted.
We found another 3.4L engine with OEM heads, and took those to a machine shop to re-do. We get the heads back this weekend. Just need new injectors and to put everything back together and hopefully we'll get on the road soon!
