Hello,
I've got a problem with my 1990 4Runner that has a 3.0 engine, automatic trans. with 4WD, where the vehicle will just die when accelerating. For instance, if I'm at a light and want to proceed the vehicle will just stall and then be hard to start for a few minutes. It makes no difference whether the engine is hot or cold. A few times the vehicle was hard to start after being driven and left parked for an hour. A couple of times it stalled out when making a turn.
Here's some background that may be helpful. The vehicle was recently in the shop to have the valve cover gaskets replaced as well as a leaky coolant hose that was right near the firewall. In the process, they also had to replace the EGR valve. When I got the vehicle back it ran great and I could notice improved performance. It seemed like it had more power. However, within a day or two I started to notice the somewhat intermittent symptoms. So it's back in the shop now.
The only other thing that I wanted to mention was that several weeks before I had the work done there was an isolated instance of the vehicle not starting. One day, after one of our extremely cold Northeastern nights, the vehicle hardly cranked when I tried to start it. Within a couple of tries the engine started cranking faster and did start only to stall out due to it being extremely cold. When I tried to start it again, it cranked fine but seemed like it wasn't firing on all cylinders. I couldn't get the vehicle started at all that day, but did manage to get it started the next day. The gas tank was half full at the time, but I filled it anyway and added a couple of cans of dry gas as a precaution. Everything seemed to be fine afterwards. The only reason for putting it in the shop was to get the coolant leak repaired as well as the leaky valve cover gaskets. I should also mention that the vehicle has Bosch platinum plugs in it that I installed sometime last Summer as part of routine maintenance.
Does anyone here have any ideas or suggestions? Any similar experiences? Thanks in advance to those who post a reply here.
Peter.