Toyota Tacoma head gasket replacement

[brichter]

Ok, you knew it was coming.

Spent a couple of hours on it Wednesday night after work, finished the teardown this morning.

Picture 1: How much has to come off to get to it, and organization is the key to putting it back together.

Picture 2: My daughter's statement when she looked under the hood: Dad, there's a big empty hole in there! (note the crosshatching in the bores, not bad for a quarter million miles...)

[brichter]

Head off.

Picture 1: Pretty clean except for the big hunk of sludge in the middle...

Picture 2: The business side of things. Notice the big witness mark between tthe 2 combustion chambers on the left, more on that later

[brichter]

The culprit.

Picture 1: Note the gap between the 2 holes on the left. The front of the engine is on the right, so #3 and #4 are on the left.

Picture 2: Closeup. Note the black stuff between the 2 holes on the right. This was a failure that had been a long time coming, that and some other things I saw lead me to believe someone's been here before, and their skill level was not equal to the job.   

[brichter]

Prior pictures were the block side of the gasket, note the black witness marks on the following pictures of the other side (cylinder head side) of the gasket. It was leaking worse on the head side, that leads me to believe the head wasn't flat the last time this job was done, or that the torque specs/procedure wasn't followed.

More to come after I take the head to the machine shop for pressure testing and surfacing if needed.

[kforeman]

wow dude that is core!!  props on your wrench turning skills, definitely more than i would have taken on.  now you'll get another 250K out of it right!!

[brichter]

I hope... 

[stayouttadabunker]

There's just not a whole lot of head gasket between the pistons...they were doomed to fail.
The engine designers should have created more space so that won't happen.
But I guess that's pretty much the way most heads are designed...
Awesome work brichter...I know what it's like, I did more auto/engine repairs than I would have liked in my lifetime....lol

[jay]

Was just watching BIG BLOCK before I rolled out of bed this morning.
I saw that they had aftermarket head braces that get mounted between the two heads to stop big blocks from cracking due to this narrow valley.
Apparently after you rev a 500hp engine over 7000 it can cause the whole block to twist on its mounts and then crack. These braces are supposed to withstand that torque.

Hopefully you won't need these......

[sommer]

Wow!!!, The engine got pretty hot.huh.   -?how long you were driving w/temp gauge over"H"mark? -.your cyd head look very bad warped?#3~4 and #1~2  maybe not be able to machine it? hope it still in a specification and not crack?.?how old is your radiator? i would just get it! thermostat and ck,your fan clutch?.good luck!!

i noticed..your fuel filter look very very old..lol..how old?.just kidding..well at lease you has new air filter and spark plugs..huh.? -

..last time i went to vegas!! on i15 big hill after barstow my eng temp got pretty hot too was little pass 3/4.lol..yeah still left the a/c running!!  i think it time for new radiator!!i'm also drive a 2001 black tacoma s-runner v-6 ..

[jay]

Actually this is a pretty common failure right after a radiator repair.

The thermostat spring gets stuck, causes the engine to overheat.

[brichter]

There's just not a whole lot of head gasket between the pistons...they were doomed to fail.
The engine designers should have created more space so that won't happen.

Wow!!!, The engine got pretty hot.huh.   -?how long you were driving w/temp gauge over"H"mark? .your cyd head look very bad warped?#3~4 and #1~2  maybe not be able to machine it? hope it still in a specification and not crack?.?how old is your radiator? i would just get it! thermostat and ck,your fan clutch?

i noticed..your fuel filter look very very old..lol..how old?.just kidding..well at lease you has new air filter and spark plugs..huh.?

..last time i went to vegas!! on i15 big hill after barstow my eng temp got pretty hot too was little pass 3/4.lol..yeah still left the a/c running!!  i think it time for new radiator!!i'm also drive a 01 black tacoma s-runner v-6 ..

Hmm, some misconceptions here...

1: The head gasket design is fine on this engine. I have a friend here in the Bay Area who just got through liquidating his older fleet of these trucks; they all had at least 500k miles on them. No oil usage (less than 1 quart) between 4000 mile oil changes, no abnormal noises or issues, no head gasket failures either. They ran like new when he sold them.

These engines are pretty much bulletproof if maintained properly. Now, if this was the Toyota 3.4 V6 from the same time period, you'd be spot on. Toyota had numerous material and procedure changes concerning head gasket replacement for those engines during the first 5 years of it's service life, trying to get a handle on the failures. They even extended the warranty on those engines to 8 years/100k for head gasket failures. I did so many of those back in the day, the service manager said I had a zipper on them!   I was seeing them fail when the vehicles were so new, I could replace the gaskets and not even get dirty.

2: The engine didn't overheat. Temp gauge always rides dead center of the gauge, never went above that on this trip. This is borne out by the fact that there are no signs of head gasket leakage into the cooling system. If the engine had overheated, the localized hot spots in the head would have caused failures where the coolant jackets are.


As I stated in posts 3 and 4, someone had been here before me, and they probably weren't the best choice of mechanics to do this job. The cam bearing caps are indexed with arrows to point to the front of the engine, only half of them were installed correctly when I pulled it apart. This leads me to believe that the head may not have been serviced or checked during the last repair, or the torque specs/procedure was not followed. Also, these are torque to yield bolts; it's never a good idea to reuse them. I have no idea if they were replaced or not the first time around.

The cam bearing caps that were assembled incorrectly show abnormal wear when compared to those that were installed properly; I'll put up some pics of those when I get a chance. This, however, is savable, just need to have the machine shop shave a couple thousandths off the caps and rebore the cam bores to fix. Since there's 2 bores, it'll be $50 additional charge. As far as warpage/cracks, I won't know until my friend at the machine shop gets a look at it on Monday.

Radiator was replaced ~1.5 years ago, still clean enough to eat off of on the inside. Fuel filter was done last year, but is located under the intake manifold, so has a tendency to catch whatever you drive in/through. Since this truck's main purpose is to haul the dirt bikes around, it spends as much time off road as on, that's why the filter is so dirty. Fan clutch and thermostat are fine, but the thermostat will be replaced anyway. Any time I repair a cooling system, the thermostat gets changed. Too cheap a part not to, and a failure here will destroy engine parts very quickly.

Sommer, what year and size is your V6? Hopefully it’s not an early-mid 90s 3.4l!  

[sommer]

weird..it never shown it run hot? did the car just stall out/lost power? any warning light?and any fail code in the system? that head it look like it got hot/warped then blow out on the compression side!! i didn't know these engine it been work on before..lol..?that's why? cheap parts or the head never been machine? not proper torque? normally these engine should last over 300-400K,
well.! i'm not sure i have an early-mid 90s 3.4l engine or not?.huh..lol..i'm a mazda tech.!! production date on the door sticker is11/00..wow..ilmao..cause i just notice today!!! that's the same month i bought my truck !! end of Nov 2000! New!! 2001 tacoma s-runner v6 5speeds..i'm really glad/?disappointed in 9 years i'm never received any mail from Toyota or DMV for any re-call..??   

[brichter]

weird..it never shown it run hot? did the car just stall out/lost power? any warning light?and any fail code in the system? that head it look like it got hot/warped then blow out on the compression side!! i didn't know these engine it been work on before..lol..?that's why? cheap parts or the head never been machine? not proper torque? normally these engine should last over 300-400K,
well.! i'm not sure i have an early-mid 90s 3.4l engine or not?.huh..lol..i'm a mazda tech.!! production date on the door sticker is11/00..wow..ilmao..cause i just notice today!!! that's the same month i bought my truck !! end of Nov 2000! New!! 2001 tacoma s-runner v6 5speeds..i'm really glad/?disappointed in 9 years i'm never received any mail from Toyota or DMV for any re-call..??  

It's got failure codes... For misfire on #3 and #4 cylinders... It happened 30-45 seconds after pulling out of the gas station, I thought it was some water in the gas causing the misfire. I pulled in to the next station down the road for some Gas Dryer (alcohol to absorb the water), but it didn't work so I went back to Joey's and pulled the spark plugs to see what was going on. The rest, as they say, is history.

No recall on 2000+ engines, they figured out the issue and resolved it by then. The 3.4 has been around since early 90s, if not the late 80s...

[CaptainHappy]

Bill,

Surprised no-one has asked yet, but in the first picture, what part of the engine do the eggs come out of?  I would have thought that they would have too thin of shells to go into an engine, also I figured that they would be cooked. (Not from the engine heat, but from being parked in Bullhead City, AZ.) 

Sorry, but I figured that you could use a laugh after your "adventure!" 

The egg carton looks like it may be the holder of the bolts and stuff that likes to disappear during a job like that.

CaptainHappy

[brichter]

The egg carton looks like it may be the holder of the bolts and stuff that likes to disappear during a job like that.

CaptainHappy

 

Pretty close, Mark! 

The valves on this engine are adjusted by changing shims under the camshafts. The egg cartons are holding the 16 shims and the buckets they go in so I can put them back in the same place they came from, and SHOULD save me the hassle of having to adjust the valves when I'm done (or at least the adjustments will be close enough that I only have to buy 1 or 2 shims, rather than a whole assortment).

[brichter]

Well, here's an update:

Took the head to the machine shop on the 13th (probably a mistake), exhaust valves were leaking pretty good. So, after 239,000 miles, it got a valve job. Head wasn't warped out of spec but was at the max acceptable, so shaved .003 off it also. The machine work, new gaskets and head bolts, thermostat and radiator altogether set me back close to a grand.

Picked the head up Saturday, started putting it back together Sunday (until the sun started shining in the garage door and the temp inside hit 115), then finished it up between 8 and 10 tonight.

Runs fine, ready for another trip to the Command Center! next time I hope it drives back under it's own power (nothing against you, Buzz! )

[stayouttadabunker]

Great job getting that ole beast running again!  


But,  115 degrees inside a garage?
I think you gotta move to a slightly cooler climate....whaddya, an Arab?....

[brichter]

Great job getting that ole beast running again! 


But,  115 degrees inside a garage?
I think you gotta move to a slightly cooler climate....whaddya, an Arab?....

The garage faces west, and we had a mini heat wave here.

[toyotaoutlaw]

is that the 2.7?? what brand gasket did you use?? i think you said how many miles were on it in one of your posts but didn't know for sure?

[brichter]

Nope, 2.4 lter and I used an OE gasket.

Mileage is in post #15: 239,000

It's at 260,000 now.

[toyotaoutlaw]

what year is it?

what brand gasket if you dont mind me asking. we only use toyota head gaskets. we kept having problems with rock gaskets and other known OE products so when it comes to something like the head gasket, timing chain and oil pump we buy directly from toyota. we rebuilt a 22re motor and put an oe oil pump on it, it turned out to be bad. so anything really important we use toyota brand only!! the oil pump was the first time that had happened to us and we build about 5 engines a year!! and do i dont know how many head gaskets a year but a lot. we had lots of problems with rock head gaskets!!

[brichter]

OE stands for original equipment. It is the same manufacturer as the one that came on the vehicle when it was new.

Toyota does not manufacture gaskets.

[Buzz]

OE stands for original equipment. It is the same manufacturer as the one that came on the vehicle when it was new.

Toyota does not manufacture gaskets.

Bill  The original  gasket failed you, why did use another inferior gasket ?? 

 I read a article the other day that said the only reason Toyota doesn't make their own head gaskets is they haven't developed the technology on how to make them out of Beer cans like the rest of the car/truck. 

[brichter]

Buzz, go back and read reply # 2. 

And post a link to the article. 

[poppo]

that head it look like it got hot/warped then blow out on the compression side!!

I'm not seeing any warping. Sometimes it's just the camera that makes things look that way.