You bought a POS, not a lemon. It's 14 years old truck with 137,000 miles ... thinking that it will not need major repairs is silly. Despite what the internet tells you... Toyota's do not go for ever with no repairs....lol.
Harsh much?
I bought a high mileage Taco from an expo member then immediately took it on a coast to coast trip, took probably 5 other long distance trips, drove it to Central Mexico for a work trip, and then back to Michigan. Every trip involving hundreds of miles of challenging lo range travel with heavy loads. So almost 3 years and 30K of travel with the only field fix being a radiator cap before I tore things apart for upgrades recently. No "internet" involved other to arrange the sale.
I don't need the internet to tell me that of the 6 people I know with 2000 era Rangers all of them blew up or became a nightmare to maintain and not one of them is still on the road while I still commute to work in one 2002 2wd Tacoma and drive anywhere to any country in another 2002 4wd Tacoma.
I am not a fanboy. My current 4WD Taco was almost a 90's 4.9 F-150 with a manual that got sold before I could buy it. I would have trusted that thing to be as reliable as the Taco I wound up with. I actually don't like anything Toyota makes now and very much like newer offerings from other makes if I wasn't too cheap to spend money on a new vehicle, and I didn't hate most new vehicle features.
But it's a bit silly to pretend every 14 year old vehicle is a POS and its also silly to pretend that in different eras of time there is not clear demonstrable differences in reliability and longevity between brands and even models and engines within brands.
I think OP hit some bad luck and bought an incredibly heavily used and to some degree abused vehicle. Also OP you should skip dealers and take it to drive-train specialists or find a friendly off road shop.
