Three days later, the exact issues came up again. This time they finally determined the head gaskets were bad. There was leaking of coolant which crystalized and then acted a s a sand blaster, damaging the plugs. Lots of carbon in the engine etc. The truck had not been running hot.
They said the timing belt was fine. They specifically checked. They said if it was a timing belt issue it would have been very sluggish. After calling numerous shops and Toyota, they determined it was a gasket leak that was between No. 1 and No. 3 which led to the coolant being in the engine which led to all of the carbon. They resurfaced the heads. The valves were OK so they don’t think the issues were caused by the timing belt. They did adjust the valves. They also replaced all of the plugs.
Seems like the initial 90k service may have led to all the problems since they were dealing with the water pump etc. Seems like they may have simply misdiagnosed the injector issue (spark plug wire issue?) Twice, but that was about $1,200 worth of misdiagnoses. Odd that it ran rough immediately after almost running out of gas.
Seems like at best, they misdiagnosed the problems 2-3 times and at worst, their original work caused the issues. Common for a 2001 Toyota 4 Runner to have bad gaskets, injectors? Is there any way I can legitimately establish any of that? What do you think? Just a series of problems that all started right after the 90k service.
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Friday, July 25th, 2008 AT 3:43 PM