Ok, now the misunderstanding is my fault. My truck runs. It runs pretty well. But I kept reading about pinging and lagging, and I wondered if maybe my truck should run better than it does.
A little more history. When I bought the truck, the engine that the previous owner had installed had about 12,000 miles on it. It ran really well. About a year and half ago, I was going through a lot in my life, noticed the radiator leaking and did nothing about it. So it ran hot one day, and blew the head gasket. At least that's what I thought, but I didn't know for sure until I got it apart. Had to do it myself because I couldn't find anyone to do it around here that I trusted for less than $1,000, this Monterey, CA, pretty expensive place for EVERYTHING.
So I bought the Toyota manual, studied what I thought was relevant, and went to work. When I got it apart, I was glad that I was right, the gasket blew between the 3rd and 4th cylinders, no water in the oil. Seemed pretty straight forward at that point. No warpage, everything seemed OK to put it back together. I didn't take the cams, rockers, valves or any of that stuff apart because I didn't think it was necessary, Since I bought the truck, I only put about 25,000 on top of the 12,000 it had on the new engine. Everything looked clean, aside from a little carbon that I got off of the cylinder heads and whatnot. Nothing alarming.
The timing chain never came off. I lined it back up properly with the cam sprocket, and put everything back where I thought it was supposed to go. But it wouldn't start, and then I realized that I just threw the distributor back on without even getting close to proper mounting. I fixed that, mostly, which is where I am now.
My truck starts fine, it runs pretty good. But I think it should run a little better. THe throttle thing is not just when it is cold, it does it all of the time, which is why I thought that something was sticking. It's not the cable, it's something after that. I can't find anything in the book about throttle position sensor, though I have read about it a couple times here.
Now as far as setting the timing goes, it wasn't clear to me that I was turning the distributor while the engine was running, now I got that. But, just to be clear, what does degrees of advance mean and why is it different on the different engines? I want to fix my truck, mostly because I can't afford for someone else to do it, but I want to understand what I am fixing, and some of the terminology doesn't lend itself to easy interpretation.
Also, if the sound of the engine changes when you adjust the distributor, why do you need the light? Is it not possilbe to hear the correct timing, or just not a good idea for some reason that I wouldn't think of? I can't imagine that they are cheap, and I don't know if I can rent one from one of the parts stores. And I need to start driving this thing to work this week. How much damage am I doing? And what is the 10-14 degrees BTDC about?