Help away from home with Gas engine trouble

[Jay4200]

I am away working and during my commute to work,my gas engine in my 02 toyota tacoma develped a serious miss. It is a distributorless 6 cylinder with 100k.

It could be just a dirty injector. My old Corolla would buck and snort like no tomorrow - I thought my clutch or transmission was shot, but it turned out that a bottle of dump-in-tank cleaner was all I needed.

When you are just about out of gas, buy a bottle of injector cleaner at WalMart. Get the high-concentrate one that treats up to 20-25 gallons, and is guaranteed to clean in one tank. Dump the whole thing in your tank in the WalMart parking lot, then drive to the gas station and fill up. Should make a difference almost immediately.

Also, both my Corolla and my old Toyota 4x4 pickup used to throw a check engine light during large temp-swing times in Spring and Fall. Condensation in the tank caused the light to trigger.

JayC

 

[Dutch445]

Toyota Tundra Forums : Tundra Solutions Forum has a great forum
for yotas, as well as Toyota Nation Forum : Toyota Car and Truck Forums

when is the last time plugs/wires were changed?
do you have 6 coils or 3? i can't remember

but like others posted, many of the parts chain
stores will pull your code for you, hoping to sell
you the parts.

 

[Dutch445]

you could always try pulling plug wires one at a
time to see if you can find 1 that isn't firing, it would be the one
that doesn't cause any change when it's unplugged.

(heavy gloves or insulated pliers or both, or do it with
the engine off)

 

[Car Doc]

I fix Toyota's for a living and am a specialist in driveabillity but cant help w/o the misfire code PO300-306 or having it here sorry.

With that said plug wires and injectors are common ailments @ 100k if no tune-up has been done yet.

I would start buy putting the 3 plug wires on it and see if it runs again to get you back on the road till a proper tune-up can be done.

That 3.4l engine has 3 coils and 3 plug wires the wires on the left side will occasionally burn thru the plastic plug boot down inside the plug tube you will see a white spot and/or a for lack of better terminology an oily (but not wet) bluish area at the spot where the top of the plug attaches inside the plug boot.

Occasionally a coil goes maybe coils are more common than injectors but not by much. You can tell by the codes if its a coil it will affect 2 cyls if just one is bad and the wires are good then its probably an injector. good luck

 

[Tollster]

Thanks for all the replies guys, I don't feel so all alone now, ya'll are like having family here.!
I hit autozone and got the codes:
Numbers a300, a303, a304
Misfire on cyl 3&4: multicodes: mav sensor, ignition issue , rich lean fuel mix, large vacuum leak, fuel injector plugged or blocked:

Just thinking here, but the mav sensor, would be all 6 cylinders, fuel pump, the same, I was under the hood, raising the idle and i here no vacuum leaks, also visually checked most all vac lines, so that leaves me with dirty injectors, or coil packs.
I have run BG44K through my yota, but not too often. However I do believe it is the best stuff available and was run through about 20 k ago. I have seen the before and after pictures of BG44K on carbon deposits, and those pictures where independent of the manufacturer. They where very impressive i must say. Anyway back to the subject.

Is it possible to loose 2 coil pacs at once? I traced the plug lead from cylinder 4 and it goes the the coil pack on cylinder 1. Was really hoping it was gonna go to 3, which bring up my question?
Each coil pac controls 2 cylinders, is it possible to loose just 1/2 of the coil pac or one cylinder from each pack?

from what I was told from the parts guy at AutoZone the firing order from front to back on
drivers side is 2, 4, 6, passenger side is 1, 3, 5. so if thats the case my two inner most are misfiring.

Also is it possible to have some spark when these fail, or do they have no spark at all? Sometime my truck feels fine, such as a high idle, or no load. But as soon as I throttle up to make a hill or pull out, it stumbles and continues to stuble until i let up. The engine light never goes out.

Sorry such long winded, I limped it home 160 miles today, and really needmy truck monday for work, starting 6 days a week 12 hours a dayfor a month,so this is my last chance to get it right.

I ordered all 3 pacs today, should be in tomorrow by noon, depends of what ya'll really have to say, but at this point with the odds kind of pointing thatway, I am will to roll the dice. Another can of BG 44k too I recon.

-Tol

 

[tcartwri]

The vacuum leak code can be thrown by a bad egr valve. Just went through this with my explorer. It did not throw any codes for the egr valve itself.

 

[fbson395]

Here in Calif. They no longer check your codes at auto zone and other places. Seems that that the repair shops got a law through and they are no longer allowed too. More $$$ out of your pocket. I purchased a code reader!

 

[DEWFPO]

How many miles are on the spark plugs? If your getting a miss in only an few cylinders under load I first look at spark plugs (gap too large), then wires, then coils and sticky injectors.

DEWFPO

 

[Car Doc]

Thanks for all the replies guys, I don't feel so all alone now, ya'll are like having family here.!
I hit autozone and got the codes:
Numbers a300, a303, a304
Misfire on cyl 3&4: multicodes: mav sensor, ignition issue , rich lean fuel mix, large vacuum leak, fuel injector plugged or blocked:



Is it possible to loose 2 coil pacs at once? I traced the plug lead from cylinder 4 and it goes the the coil pack on cylinder 1. Was really hoping it was gonna go to 3, which bring up my question?
Each coil pac controls 2 cylinders, is it possible to loose just 1/2 of the coil pac or one cylinder from each pack?



from what I was told from the parts guy at AutoZone the firing order from front to back on
drivers side is 2, 4, 6, passenger side is 1, 3, 5. so if thats the case my two inner most are misfiring.



Also is it possible to have some spark when these fail, or do they have no spark at all? Sometime my truck feels fine, such as a high idle, or no load. But as soon as I throttle up to make a hill or pull out, it stumbles and continues to stuble until i let up. The engine light never goes out.



Sorry such long winded, I limped it home 160 miles today, and really needmy truck monday for work, starting 6 days a week 12 hours a dayfor a month,so this is my last chance to get it right.

I ordered all 3 pacs today, should be in tomorrow by noon, depends of what ya'll really have to say, but at this point with the odds kind of pointing thatway, I am will to roll the dice. Another can of BG 44k too I recon.


-Tol

Yes but not common plus your codes do not show that as a possibility more like wires



They are correct on the firing order



If a plug boot under a coil burns thru it will not fire that cyl but will fire the other cyl, the coils fire both cyls at a time its called waste spark so they fire a cyl when its on compression stroke the waste spark means even though a cyl is getting fire it may either be on a compression stroke or exhaust stroke where it doesn't do anything but fire




Forget about all the fuel additives buy a set of wires too and NGK plugs they are a special double ground electrode type (not bosch platinums or anything else they try to sell you NGK ONLY) to go with the coils and it will probably run cant say 100% because I cant hear it etc good luck

 

[Tollster]

Yes but not common plus your codes do not show that as a possibility more like wires



They are correct on the firing order

If a plug boot under a coil burns thru it will not fire that cyl but will fire the other cyl, the coils fire both cyls at a time its called waste spark so they fire a cyl when its on compression stroke the waste spark means even though a cyl is getting fire it may either be on a compression stroke or exhaust stroke where it doesn't do anything but fire


Forget about all the fuel additives buy a set of wires too and NGK plugs they are a special double ground electrode type (not bosch platinums or anything else they try to sell you NGK ONLY) to go with the coils and it will probably run cant say 100% because I cant hear it etc good luck

FIXED
You nail it Doc, as did quite a few others. I really appriciate ya'll jumping in here as quick as you did as I was kind of under gun with my job away from home, nothing really personal but quite frankly I am outa my element working 30 miles from NYC, so it was a case that I had to do at home with my own tools, or my regular wrench when I get in overmehead.

Replaced coil pacs (3) plugs (NGK's, keep japans plugs in Japans engines, there really is a difference), and leads. Light is out, no stuble or miss, very smooth idle.
Ran down to autozone 30 miles, and cleared the codes.

I was mistaken when I said I replaced the pacs before as they looked to be the original Nippsadino, so It was only plugs and leads I had done previously.



Anyway, thank you for all you help here, and I really mean that very much!

-TOL