Great, just great. Brake line rusted through and drained everything.

[Mark_BC]

It's now 12:30 in the morning and I was looking underneath and noticed some water drops on the garage floor which shouldn't be there because it is in the dry. I saw that it was coming from a rusty brake line so I picked at it a bit and all broke loose. :mad2: :shocked: I have lost about a third of a gallon so far. :wow: It is one of the two brake lines inner to the frame rail, located under the the front passenger area. It is the outer one. I don't know why those ones are so rusty, none of the others are too bad.

I'll post some photos tomorrow. I hope I haven't drained the system too far because I remember reading that if you do you have to go to the stealership to get the master cylinder properly flushed of air. At least the fluid coming out is nice and clean which I presume means the PO's did regular maintenance on it.

Also I'll have to source some new lines and replace them, might as well do them all now that the system is empty. I don't know much about the brake system, was planning to learn and I guess I'll be learning quickly now! :help:

Oh well I guess I should be glad it happened in the garage and not out in the bush.

 

[aontkos]

You're lucky that this didn't happen on the road. A few years back my girlfriend was driving behind me when the traffic in front of me came to a dead stop pretty abruptly. She tried to brake, but didn't slow down, and had to run off the road to avoid hitting me.

One of her brake lines busted when she tried to stop. Her car spent its whole live in Michigan...that salt just destroys everything.

Glad you're safe.

 

[19963.4lsr5]

Do you know which line it is? You maybe able to buy a prebent line from the dealer.

My 04 Grand Cherokee rust through the rear line 2 winters ago. I was able to purchase all the factory line (3 of them) with my account for 36 dollars and replaced the rear and the front drivers hard lines at the same time.


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[Mark_BC]

We'll gosh willy geez do I feel silly. I noticed that the coolant reservoir is empty so it was actually the heater lines going back to the rear seats I believe. DOH!!!! I went to pick and pull and got another set from a 2002. There is no paint or rust on them so I assume stainless. $20. Whew, disaster averted.

 

[MN4runnerman]

We'll gosh willy geez do I feel silly. I noticed that the coolant reservoir is empty so it was actually the heater lines going back to the rear seats I believe. DOH!!!! I went to pick and pull and got another set from a 2002. There is no paint or rust on them so I assume stainless. $20. Whew, disaster averted.

So those 4 lines that are on the passenger side in a loop are for the rear heater? Cuz I thought they were brake lines too.(I'm in the same boat as you sort of) Did you take a picture of it?

 

[ZionXIX]

So those 4 lines that are on the passenger side in a loop are for the rear heater? Cuz I thought they were brake lines too.(I'm in the same boat as you sort of) Did you take a picture of it?

Im fairly certain those go to the ABS

 

[MN4runnerman]

Im fairly certain those go to the ABS

Sh*t that's what I thought, was just holding out a bit of hope. I'm not looking forward to fixing it.

 

[ZionXIX]

Sh*t that's what I thought, was just holding out a bit of hope. I'm not looking forward to fixing it.

Just to be clear, you are talking about this right?

 

[Mark_BC]

Just to be clear, you are talking about this right?

No, the ones that rusted on me are visible in the very lower right of your photo. If you follow them down they go alongside the frame and back into the body near the rear seat.

I am certain they are coolant. The ones I pulled off the 2002 spewed bright green coolant.

 

[MN4runnerman]

Just to be clear, you are talking about this right?

Nope. There are four lines running parallel to the ground along the inside of the frame they loop together so it's technically only 2 lines but it looks sort of like this.
========D
========D
(I'm not near it and I don't have a pic on my phone, best I could do and yes I know it looks like a dick)
They are located underneath the passenger front door and are on the inside of the frame. I can't find any info on them in my fsm or anything whether I look under the brakes section or heater section.

 

[19963.4lsr5]

My 96 had the under passenger seat heater in stainless. The 97 puppy hauler were or are steel and rusted through. I just bypassed the rusted lines up at the heat control valve. Never use the heater under the seat anyway


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[Scramble]

We'll gosh willy geez do I feel silly. I noticed that the coolant reservoir is empty so it was actually the heater lines going back to the rear seats I believe. DOH!!!! I went to pick and pull and got another set from a 2002. There is no paint or rust on them so I assume stainless. $20. Whew, disaster averted.

I was gonna say... the entire brake system only holds a quart. When you said almost a gallon in your first post I though something sounded fishy.

Green coolant & Red brake fluid almost look the same! LOL:rofl:

 

[MN4runnerman]

[MENTION=146628]Mark_BC[/MENTION] did you notice a loss of heat when this happened to you?

 

[Mark_BC]

I was gonna say... the entire brake system only holds a quart. When you said almost a gallon in your first post I though something sounded fishy.

Green coolant & Red brake fluid almost look the same! LOL:rofl:

Yeah I knew something didn't seem right. It has red coolant but felt awfully watery... I read that there are alcohol based brake fluids so I thought it might be that.

I just snipped them off up in the engine compartment and welded 'em shut. Painted them and I'll put them back on when the paint dries, then filter the coolant that I collected in a bucket and pour it back in!!

:banana:

 

[Mark_BC]

[MENTION=146628]Mark_BC[/MENTION] did you notice a loss of heat when this happened to you?

I wasn't driving.

 

[MN4runnerman]

I wasn't driving.

Yeah I read that in your first post. Was just wondering if you were running it in your garage.

 

[Scramble]

Yeah I knew something didn't seem right. It has red coolant but felt awfully watery... I read that there are alcohol based brake fluids so I thought it might be that.

I just snipped them off up in the engine compartment and welded 'em shut. Painted them and I'll put them back on when the paint dries, then filter the coolant that I collected in a bucket and pour it back in!!

:banana:

Yea, I thought about the Red Yota coolant after I finished typing but I've never used it since I have a manual. Prestone every 30K is fine for me.

 

[Mark_BC]

Here are some photos

Here they are underneath the car, all rusty. Upper left photo

They connect to the heater / coolant stuff here. I undid the clamps and pulled them off.

Snipped and ready to weld

All welded up

 

[Scramble]

On another note, your frame looks pretty good except for that one hole that has a blockage. Rinse that sucker out. I made all of my drain hole's bigger with a step drill bit.

 

[Mark_BC]

Actually that was just the threads showing in that photo of the frame hole, it is clear. Inside the frame seems relatively OK, this summer I'll clean up the frame inside and out.

So I'm glad I noticed this coolant leak problem and fixed it right away. The coolant looks really good. This is on my Desert Dune truck, Sandy.

I decided to look at my other T4R, Snowy, which lives at my mom's house. LOL those pipes were totally rusted through. She told me that a few years ago it was getting up into the red zone so she got it towed in to the stealership. They told her that they had rusted right through and that's why she was losing coolant, and they said it would be really expensive to replace these pipes (really???? I just picked some used ones up from the junkyard for $20 and that was too much). Good on them for suggesting a cheaper alternative to bypass the rear heater from where those hoses leave the area by the windshield, which they did. I vaguely remember this happening but not well since I wasn't really paying attention to Snowy back then.

Since then it has overheated a couple times when I took it up mountains, one of those times it boiled over into the reservoir. But since then I have towed a sailboat up a big hill with no problems so it didn't blow out back then. A few months ago I got a new radiator out of fear of the pink milkshake.

I recently got really concerned that I shot the head gasket, head, or worse, the block, with all this cooling system abuse.

Today I started it up. It was parked in the moist forest and it was kind of cool and humid out, so white smoke was coming out a bit at first but evaporating a few feet away, I guess this is normal. I had the radiator cap off and no bubbles or anything came up, so looks like I don't have any compression leaks. I moved it into the sunny parking lot and there was no smoke at all from the exhaust and it smelled as good as one would expect, I could put my face right up to the exhaust and breath without gagging. Ran it for 15 minutes to warm it up, revved it and all sounds and runs great.

Sorry for all this essay, my question is about when I checked under the oil cap, see photo below. Is this normal? I hear that sometimes moisture could cause this, not coolant. The coolant looks great, nice and green but maybe if coolant was going somewhere else other than the cylinder it could cause this problem. Maybe I should drain the oil and have a look at that?

The coolant reservoir was empty upon startup but that could be because I recently had the shop replace the radiator and maybe there was some air bleeding that still had to happen after that which was displaced by the coolant (the radiator was full at startup and when warmed up it was dripping into the reservoir). Other than this, maybe the coolant is getting in the oil areas, but not the cylinders?????

It's too bad something so minor as rusting rear seat heater hoses can potentially cause such problems which can lead to the eventual destruction of the engine. This was a design flaw on the part of Toyota, making these hoses steel. Later years were aluminum which is what the replacement one I got is. I think this should be added to the sticky thread of issues to watch out for with earlier model 3rd gens. It is so easy to diagnose and fix but the consequences of not noticing these pipes rusting away can be catastrophic.