'96 Tacoma 4x4 Front diff removal

Is the differential obstructing the oil pan?

I checked AutoZone to see what the instructions were. It says to remove the differential...

Sorry...

Obstructing maybe not the oil pan itself, but at least the removal of the last couple screws that hold it...

Since I vented with that last post, I unbolted the engine mounts. I will remove the oil pan tomorrow. Makes me wish I had just un done the engine mounts to begin. It seems with the engine unbolted (and the exhaust undone from the downpipe) that I will have enough room now to remove the oilpan. What a friggin pain.

I am glad I am not a toyota dealership mech.

no reason for you to be sorry. You weren't the brilliant engineer that designed this horse s*it.

Thanks for looking it up and trying to help. You are one of the most informative bastids on this newsgroup. Thanks for your help every time! *I* am sorry that some stupid liberal fuckwads think that this is the place to discuss politics (and subsequently get destroyed). It seems that most people in this country will not be happy until we are all living in tents with no electricity and using camel s*it to keep warm and cook food. Oh yeah, don't forget, we need to all wipe our asses with our left hands because the left hand is dirty. I say to you: GIVE *YOUR* MONEY AWAY! I WANT TO KEEP

Oh s*it! Why are we even discussing cars? We should be discussing tents and sand and pure poverty. My bad, buddy!

Welcome to our discussions. I look forward to more from you.

LOL! There are plenty of times I feel like booking a flight to Japan to punch some engineer in the nose! And not just Toyotas, but on my Subys, too.

On my Mazda, the only real OOOPS I could find was the fill for the

I try! Like I said, these things can be frustrating! Sometimes just getting a glimmer can help.

Unfortunately, I'm guilty of this myself. I try to keep on topic with the cars, but every once in a while I hear something that I think needs exposure. And we certainly have a forum for that here, don't we?!

I don't hold their Liberalism against them half as much as they do for me being a Quasi-Conservative. What I do find amusing is that the people that would give the farm away to illegals will jump on a Conservative with unbridled fury.

That reminds me of something I've been meaning to post here. A dairy farm that uses cow manure for energy. They leach off the methane and burn it, and produce enough energy to power their operation plus another 120 homes. What's left afterwards is potting soil and fertilizer. Looks like a win-win to me. You use the fuel and then sell what's left afterwards.

Then, last week, I hear the price of cow manure is at an all time high!!! (No kidding, they mentioned it on NBC Nightly News...)

But I digress. Thanks for the vote of confidence!

No sweat. I don't see anyone else trying half as hard as you to give real information about the cars as well as life.

The real "saviour" of the earth will be the person who finds a way to run power plants with just the gases from s*it from the "water purification" plants around the country. S*IT is the future. It's abundant and *RENEWABLE* LOL!!! ...it could be turned from a "nuisance" into something useful.

I did find this:

Cheers for the link!

I did finally manage to get the oil pan off the engine. I unbolted both engine mounts and the exhaust and hoisted the engine enough (with the diff unbolted and flopping around as well). I could not, however, pull it out from the bottom. I had to come out the top with it after I removed the oil pickup. What a pain in the rear...

I thiink that's a job I woud have *paid* to have done! ;)

Hope you kept a copy of the manual for further reference! These are usually Factory manuals and come in handy.

Yes, the manual definitely helped untold amounts.

I finally got the thing back together... Let me fill you in on everything I have done to this 3.4:

Was told that the engine needed head gaskets when we bought it. When I put a socket on the crank bolt to undo it, I found that the bolt was less than finger tight. The belt pulley keyway was wallowed as well as the keyway on the crankshaft timing belt sprocket Had to purchase

Update:

Just went for a 20 minute drive. Engine runs smoothly, has great trottle responsibility.

If I drive normally and let the engine go into 3rd and then OD and chill at 1500 or so RPM, the gauge immediately starts to climb. Shifting back into 2nd (and raising the RPM to 2000+) makes the temp immediately start to plummet once again. The more I drive, the less it seems to do this, but it still is worrysome. Hach, would appreciate your input on this one.. this is the first 3.4 I've done. Runs much better than I would have expected, 'cept for the stupid overheating problem... It doesn't stall or sound rough either. It sounded rough once today, but we shut it down immediately...

One of the techs who used to post frequently here ran into a similar condition that turned out to be something stuck in one of the coolant passages in the block. Whatever was stuck came out when he disconnected the radiator and back-flushed plain water through the system.

Since you seem to have a fair amount of experience working on engines, I'll assume that you had the heater water valve fully open when you filled the coolant and used a new radiator cap on the new radiator.

The random engaging of the fan clutch seems odd, you may want to remove it, heat it up with a hair dryer or heat gun, and see if it locks up properly.

Also, is the fan shroud in place?

Hmmmm... sounds interesting. I guess I will try the back flush. I'm sure something could have made its way into the coolant passages

-- probably a huge georgia brown recluse spider.. LOL Who knows.

I have to admit, I did do the heater valve fully open when I filled it, but I have not bought a new radiator cap yet. I will purchase one of those today.

After I posted my last message yesterday, we went for another drive. Seems now the temp. gauge rides in the middle unless you move the heater lever to 'cold'... if you have it on 'half hot' to 'fully hot', no problems at all.

Okay, I 'll try that hairdryer stuff.. Yes, the fan shroud is on.. I'm sure i'll get this sorted eventually... it's nice to have some people off which to bounce this stuff

It sounds like the little extra bit of cooling from the heater is enough to prevent problems. Radiator caps are pretty cheap so start with that, and check the fan clutch.

Replaced both... still doing the same thing. Once it cools down again this afternoon, I'm going to backflush it..

The cooling system is not over-pressurizing, so hopefully the head isn't still cracked/cracked again... argh, this is annoying!

Flushed it this afternoon after it cooled down sufficiently. I let plain ol' water run through there (put a flushing tee in place of the heater valve -- i'm not cutting a $40 molded heater hose that would take two weeks to get where I live..).. let it flush for at least 20 mins to half an hour..

I took the thermostat out before I did the flush.. closed the system again and left the thermostat out of there. Filled with plain water and ran the truck for at least 20 mins and drove it around the block a couple times... (would have been enough to make the gauge start to climb before without heater on). Couldn't get the gauge to come up even to halfway... so .. Obviously, my test of the old thermostat was bull$hit... I must have heated it too much and fail-safed it...

Needless to say, I feel rather idiotic! At least my brother is smart enough not to overheat the thing..

Thanks everyone for the help! I appreciate it!