Seeking Advice

Hello everyone! I am new to this page and was seeking advice on maintenance of my 2005 4Runner Sport V6. My car was purchased in November 2019 with ~210,000 miles; I am currently sitting at ~258,000. Besides 2 visits to the shop (ignition valve replacement and tune up the 1st time, coil pack replacement the 2nd), regular oil changes, and a set of new tires, I have done nothing else to my vehicle. I am the 2nd owner of the vehicle, and the original owners took great care of it. However, I have no idea when they had any parts, fluids, etc. replaced, The AC compressor is bad (has anyone else had this problem and how much did it cost to fix) Other than that, I would say my vehicle runs great for its age; but, I am a college student and need it to stay that way for another couple years. My parents have never owned vehicles long enough to need to worry about these things, so I have no one to go to. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!

 

Welcome to the forum!

The previous owner didn't give you any maintenance records when you bought your 4Runner?

It is possible that the local Toyota dealer could help you with maintenance performed by Toyota. They might have the information stored in their computers.

Otherwise you might have to start from scratch and start doing that maintenance per the maintenance schedule.

 

Welcome

 

welcome

 

Go to the Toyota Owners website and signup, enter your VIN number and it's possible if all service was done at a Toyota dealership you can find the service history or at least some of it.

https://www.toyota.com/owners/

 

Welcome to the forums!

Brain dump from my 2000 Limited days...

Engine:

• A very much overlooked engine component is the PCV valve (around $10). It's one of the easiest engine component to inspect and replace.
• You've already caught the coil pack (I had replaced one around the same mileage on my 2000...) so aside from other 'ignition' related components (spark plugs/wires) you should be good in that area.
• See if you can inquire with the previous owners if the timing belt was ever replaced and at what mileage. This is one crucial component that you need to be aware of if it has more than 100,000 miles on it.
• Do you hear a slight ticking sound coming from the engine at idle? It may be time to do a valve adjustment and possibly new valve stem seals. I did this to mine at the 300K mark.
• Inspect all hoses and belts. It may be time to replace some/all.
• May be overdue to have the water pump and thermostat replaced. When the engine is cold, carefully pop open the radiator cap and take a peek inside. if the internals look clean then you should be okay on the thermostat front. Any signs of deposit(s) (white - mineral looking) then chances are the thermostat is getting gunked up and will begin to malfunction.
• A new fuel filter is optional, I think I replaced mine around 200K.
• An AC Compressor from Rock Auto is around a couple hundred (just the part) so including labor and refrigerant recharge maybe $400 - $500? Beware of the refrigerant sold in cans at automotive stores. You dont want to use any refrigerant that has any amount of 'Stop Leak' in it. This stuff messes up a good deal of the AC system and eventually will cause for complete replacement of the entire AC system.

Undercarriage:

• If you could post up some pictures of the undercarriage it would help us to pinpoint not the obvious but also to identify potential things needing future attention.
• Inspect all 'rubber' items. Look for any signs of leaking CV boots, hose line (brakes) cracking, compression wear of any bushing(s)....
• Won't get into surface corrosion on the frame/chassis, in many instances severe corrosion concern will be obvious...pictures would be helpful here. I've included a pic of the front suspension on my old 2000, at well above 300K miles so you can see what 'serviceable' (acceptable) surface corrosion looks like as well as the condition of the rubber components. Not saying yours needs to appear like this, just meant to give you an idea what things would look like nearly brand new.

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• Might be overdue to have front/rear diffs, transfer case and transmission fluids changed out. Speaking of diffs and xfer case, remember to cycle those once a month...find a straight roadway you can stop, engage and drive for a mile or so then stop and disengage.

If your T4R has rarely been off-pavement then it's a good bet that the entire drive system will be good to well over 400K miles. Mine went that far and was still in very good condition despite being off-pavement for over 25% of those miles.

 

Are you confident its the compressor thats bad?
The compressor is more unlikely to go bad than the evaporator in the dash. There are two o-ring fittings on the evaporator in the dash and those o-rings dry out and leak. This pisses your freon out of the system into the box in the dash. After your freon leaks out the low pressure switch activates and wont allow the compressor to kick on. This is often diagnosed as a bad compressor, but hooking gauges up should typcially show you low pressure on the low pressure side, i think anything below 8psi wont allow the compressor to cut on. Pretty much all of the 4th gens with that evaporator they have are starting to leak in the 18ish year age.

The fix sucks, its a lot of work you gotta pull the seats, the dash, drop the steering column, pull the whole dash bar out, basically everything to the firewall comes out in order to get the evaporator box assembly out. This also tears out the heater core which means you might as well get a heater core and put back in it too.

I ALWAYS use the Toyota parts because the LAST thing you want is to do 15 hours of labor pulling everything apart and putting it back together and a cheap china evaporator split or mess up and cause you to have to tear it back down. Using the Toyota evaporator, and Toyota heater core, along with the Toyota long life coolant plus the AC recharge is normally about $2800. Its only about $600 in parts but its a crap ton of labor and you are pretty much guaranteed to need two people for about 1 hour worth of it on the dash stuff.

ALSO, with the new evaporator and new seals and o-rings you can crank the refrigerant pressure up a bit higher, around 45-48psi that system will really get it and get down to about 40 degrees out the vents.