Ahh... okay.

There's been a TON of talk here over the years about adding a SC or Turbo to the 3.4L. The block can certainly handle the horsepower, but you HAVE to do mods to the fuel system to be able to keep the engine fed. If you don't, then more times than not you run into the engine running very lean on the top end, and pinging hard under acceleration.

I've been a HUGE advocate of the mods and spend most of my time here talking about them. My engine DID have mods on it... When we tore the engine down I had clearly burned a valve, but it wasn't from running lean or knocking. The best guess at the moment is that it;s possible that I was running too _rich_ and was able to ignite all of the mixture.

Anyway... proper fuel mods are a MUST, but then year... 223k could be on the high side of this being a "practical" investment for you.

 

223? Try 260 at the moment....and i beat the crap out of my tacoma..it went through lots of pinging as i tested different setups...
If the engine fires up and runs good...sc is fine with fuel mods

 

ok so one says yes and the other says no. I know that the fuel setup will have to be improved to keep up with the SC, but if I get all the necessary testing done to see if the engine is up for the SC will it be safe to do it. I plan on doing this a good while down the road but I wont even bother if its a waist of time.

 

I vote for Johnny's answer!

Get a compression test done, and a leakdown. Those will probably be the two big things that will help you judge what you're in for.

Has the engine been well-maintained? (water pump, timing belt, filters, plugs, injectors pulled and cleaned?) Are you the original owner?

One HUGE thing that I can say here is that my block/crank/cams/connecting rods/most pistons were _like new_. I DID score a couple of pistons, but that's from driving with that burned valve for about 4k. My engine temps were WAY high, to the point of destroying the porcelain off of two cylinders (the burned one and the adjacent).

 

^ YOur pistons were really pitted good ol detonation...

thanks again for giving them to me to send away!

 

sweet mark... cant wait for the dyno results..

 

No I'm not the original owner. The engine is in good shape and there is no problems reported on carfax. I will be picking it up within the next few weeks. I believe both the water pump and timing belt have roughly 20k miles of use. So the compression test and a leakdown are my best bet of determining if the engine is up to it correct? I figured I would ask now that way I would know if it was even worth considering.

 

Ahh... so this will be a newly acquired vehicle... what year is it? 2WD, 4WD? 4Runner, Tacoma, T100? Auto, Manual? Where did the truck live before?


I think it's th place to start... if the cylinders can't hold compression now then they're gonna have issues with 7psi of air forced into them.

If you can borrow a borescope it may not be a bad idea to get a look inside the cylinders.

You'll also wanna drain all fluids and check for things like metal filings in the oil and tranny fluid, good color in the antifreeze, test the antifreeze with chem test strips first: http://www.google.com/search?&q=testing+antifreeze - that can give you a good idea as to how much someone paid attention to the rig; pull the intake tube and check for deposits at the TB - again, a good indicator of someone caring or not... Replace the PCV valve, air filter, oil filter. Drive it for a thousand miles or so and note the gas mileage. That's a good indicator of engine heath as well.

 

I am also planning on supercharging my 2000 4runner. The end result i hope to be simular to marks in mods. Now externally it will be a little differnt.

It has 120K on it right now and it is in the shop getting the timing done right now. i will then be doing every little tune up thing there is to do and then i will drive it for a few weeks to break it in before getting into modding it.

I will start off with the small stuff so that when i get the 2.5K for the actuall super charger it is ready to bolt on and every thing else is done.

 

how effective was the port/polish job on its own? how much does it cost to do something like that?

 

Its a 98 Automatic 4runner 4WD with the E-Locker. It came in the country through Michigain (I think it was there for some recall on that year 4runners), then shipped to Florida where it was sold. It was traded in and the new owner bought and drove it to Georgia. Now I'm about to get it from him.

 

There's no telling how much it helped alone, it was done while the heads were off during the rebuild. When the engine went back together, the high duration cams also went in and the injectors had been flow-matched.

In the end, "probably not that much" but the ports are DEFINITELY bigger and a TON smoother (they're really purty) - maybe 10hp on the top end and a bit smoother of a power line.

Cost wise... again, I dunno. I know what I paid the head guy to do ALL of the head work, but there was a LOT of work to do.



Hmmm, okay, so we're looking at 223k in 9 years and some of that time in MI. If it spent enough time in MI to live through a winter or two, then you'll wanna look for rust.

The reason I'm asking all this is to try to get an idea of how the truck's been used, and ultimately, taken care of.

Do the two tests, lookit the fluids, and let us know what the results are.

Finger's Crossed!

 

It was only in Michigan for a recall then it was shipped to a dealer in Florida to be sold as a brand new vehicle. Thanks for all the Q&A and the test will be performed.

 

Check under the oil cap too...engines that dont get taken care of often have a thick slime buildup under the cap. The toyota v6s are very picky on oil changes...especially the MZ series...so that something to keep an eye out.

 

uh-oh... another mod this weekend...

The change in my sig is subtle this time, but it has something to do with BOOST.

I'm pushing 9.5 lbs baby!

 

Vacuum for life yo

 

So Mark - I spied you heading down Meridian/80th last night - I'm guessing that you were doing some tuning on the 228th hill - how did 9.5#s do against the hill?

(for those of you who don't know - the 228th hill is called "mile long hill" - its pretty knarly from the back side)

 

I thought a 2.0" pulley did more than 9.5psi? A 2.2" pulley does close to 9psi ASL from what I've seen...

 

Oh crap... you live over there/here? oop!

...from a dead stop at the bottom of that hill, I'm doing over 70 at the top and still pulling hard.


Yeah... It's at least a 10% grade that's about a 1/4 mile long. This is a shot of the hill from the winter time...





Ummm, not for me. Stock pulley had me about 5psi, the 2.2 got me to 7, the 2.0" gets me to 9.5. Could be an altitude thing, or I've got a major leak somewhere.


fwiw, the SC sounds even closer to coming apart with the 2.0. omg, it's kinda' scary. Once nice side effect is that having it spin faster up top means that it's spinning faster down low as well. The increase in torque at low RPMs is VERY noticeable.

 

hehe coming apart eh
kinda like this?