I heard about Yodaman from a wheeler in the Norcal area. He said that he was the best Toyota wrench this side of the world, pretty much. I usually do all the work on my truck so I'd have to be into something sticky to need a shop, right? So in the interest of expedience, I found a great long block from Oregon Engine Rebuilders Inc. at a great price and an awesome warranty. John made it an easy transaction and was very knowledgeable. I bought the "Super Stock" motor with an rv cam and bigger valves. Everything was tight and it was a nice build up. Well, my last engine swap went easily enough twelve years ago (when she was at 172,000 mi and still new to me). This time, even though I took great pains to keep stuff organized and preserve or replace every component in there, my new long block build up was running funny. Sorta rough. I checked all the vacuum lines, elecrical, bolts present and tight, torques, you name it. My expert toyota racing friend got it as good as it would get and I booked a trip to Yodaman in Santa Rosa. I'd driven past his shop a couple of times and always had to slow down to drool over the Rock Candy parked out front and in the garage. He works on some awesome rigs. Basic stuff like mine too, of course. At a very competitive $90/hr, average cost in the greater Bay Area, you'd be dumb not to go there. Larry, AKA Yodaman, was really personable, listened, and suggested great things right off the bat, never mind that he let me bring my truck in 15 min after normal closing time. Anyway, I left after a tour of his shop and a look at some future projects and the stuff they're working on now, his spare parts trove and his own personal rig: a beautiful propane sipping 3.4L wrapped in a stainless on Rising Sun paint scheme with a toolbox flatbed mounted on big ol rock crawling wheels. He showed me his propane conversion and all the goodies he takes on the trails. Who knew you could store so many spare parts in the undercarriage! Check it out at www.yodaman.net
I digress..... Anyway, Larry called me the next day and said the first thing he noticed while pulling my truck in the first night was that it's running on 3 cylinders. Later that day he called and said he traced the problem to a broken ground wire in the #2 injector. The next day it was fixed and he had checked my head bolt torques, set my valve lash, timing ,tps position, idle speed, rearranged a few vacuum lines at the throttle body(the letters cast in the molding of the parts disagreed with the hood sticker. The hood was right), and made sure all my bolts were present and tight. He had also installed a strange looking new thermostat to fix the coolant temp overshoot problem on warming up. When I test drove it it started right up, drove smoothly and had power (well, as much as I wanted to push a rebuild with only 150 miles on it). Now a week later it's even smoother (breaking in) and if it weren't for my old steering components I wouldn't know the difference from a brand new vehicle straight off the lot (except the FJ Cruiser I drove had twice the engine!) I've never felt my truck run so well. I can't wait 'til she's broken in and ready to run!
Thanks Larry and the guys at Yodaman. After all these years I've finally found a mechanic.