Intro and Engine help 98 4runner

[gatorfish]

Quick intro... Been around off road vehicles for quite a while. I've had 10 jeeps, from stock to wild, nissans, and land rovers. I have moved from trail riding to rock crawling and now into vehicle camping/overlanding with the growing family.

I recently picked up my first toyota after a long search. Its a 1998 4runner limited with diff lock and all. 122k one owner with an extensive maintainance history. Over the two months i have owned it, its run flawlessly. Really starting to enjoy toyota. Every light, switch, button, etc. works. Everything. Quite remarkable for a 15 yo truck...especially after owning land rovers.

Over the last week it's been inconsistently running poorly. Rough idle and it stumbles under acceleration. Check engine light finally came on and indicates a misfire in 5, and occasionally 5 and 2. replaced the plugs with ngk doubles, the wires with ngk, and swapped the coil packs around with same results. i replaced the coil pack anyway, along with the air filter and gave the MAF a good cleaning. Head gasket, injectors came back good. Timing chain done at 90k.

Now its consistently running awful after it gets warmed up.

Shop says bad head. Crap.

Anything else i should check before spending the big bucks? Beginning to regret selling my 2004 Disco for this...almost

Thanks

 

[JasonRedwood]

Not sure if you haven't looked around here yet, http://www.toyota-4runner.org/3rd-gen-t4rs/, they may be able to answer your questions.
Subscribing, I recently picked up a 98 with 130 k on it.

 

[OSV]

get a cheap harbor freight vacuum gauge, if there is a bad valve, it should show up on a vacuum test.

hopefully the shop ran a compression check? you didn't tell us why they said that it's a head problem.

another thing that you could test is the egr valve... if you put vacuum to it while the motor is idling, it'll kill the engine, or make it run poorly.

 

[gatortrd]

Sorry to bump an old thread but I am the OP. After a long hiatus from this site I had to rejoin due to a dead email address.

Anyway, that problem was a bad injector. Once replaced it ran flawlessly.

I have sold this 4R, replaced it with another 3rd 4R, sold that and just purchased my first new vehicle in 15 years. A 2017 Tacoma TRD offroad 4x4. Look forward to hanging around this forum again and my Taco evolve into a family camping light overland truck.

 

[onemanarmy]

Thanks for the update. All too often people leave their threads unanswered.

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