I'm a newbie with a few questions!

[noelaninoelani]

First off I'd like to say thank god I found this site! I just recently bought my 99 4Runner (111K miles), stick shift, 4x4. It has been good driving up till a few days ago.

Problem #1. while at idle (stop light ect) it started to feel like it wanted to die out. Well yesterday it started stalling while at a light, but would start back up easily. My uncle whos a Chevy mech, cleaned the throttle body, and said to run it for a few days and see if that helped. Well so far today no stalling. Fingers crossed. The check engine light comes on every other day or so, and then goes away..........

Problem #2. This morning while sitting idle in a drive thru, I noticed the temp gauge was rising. It got right under red. When I started to drive it went back down to normal. I had a schedule maintenance for today so I mentioned it to our mechanic. Well he just called to tell me my car is ready,and that I had low fluid caused by a crack in the radiator. He said I should change it soon.

I am planning on changing the radiator asap, but I wanted to check with you guys first, and get some advice. Do you think this is all I should be having done? I was planning on doing a tune up...but that has to wait till after the radiator, because of lack of fundage. So please give me your toughts. I'm a girl and I just wanna make sure that the mechanic isn't telling me something just because of that!

Thanks in advace! Mahalo!

 

[Mr. Dabadina]

Aloha from a local freezing on the mainland, and welcome to the forum. My nieces name is Noelani. Not relevant but on the mainland its rare to see, even on the internet.

I would ask your uncle, but a crack radiator would result in the temp. raising like it does. As you moved the air was able to assist in the cooling and lowered your temps. As for the rough idle, unfortunately there are a few things, or a combination of things that can cause this. My 4runner's CEL came on, (rough idle) I called the dealership and they said $70 to hook up the scanner to tell me what the problem was. To cheap for that, so I took it to a chain parts store such as advanced auto and had them hook a OBD scanner (call first to see if they do it, one will do it for free) to my 4runner, So I would do that and have them print out the code (for the check engine light) and tell us what code the is and we can further help ya out. My problem was one of my spark plugs was bad. I shoulda changed the wires and plugs, but only did the plugs, and it is 95% better.