Currently broken down in the middle of nowhere

I am towing a 8,000-lb trailer to our hunting lands. The truck just started randomly running only on the left side of the motor. I am limping into the nearest town going about 30 miles an hour at full throttle. Any advice on what the issue might be?

 

Air pumps

 

2nd this motion... if you can clean them out, jump over to oreillys and look up how to clean them on this site..

 

Any weird dash lights on? I'd prob start by disconnecting the battery cables for 15-20 mins. Reconnect them & start it up, see what you've got......good luck dude, I've been in the same spot.

 

https://www.tundras.com/threads/secondary-air-injection-pump-failure.41038/page-4
pg 5 is the part number... this may help you out in the mean time... besides resetting your truck every 30 minutes to an hour.. best of luck..

 

I got it to a shop! I limoed into town. They looked at the spark plugs and it looks like coolant might have been getting down in the cylinder. They are looking at it now. It looks like my buddy with a Silverado is going to come to the rescue and save the hunting trip!

It looks like the weight distribution hitch broke as well. They are fabricating a fix for it currently...

 

Nice! Good luck. That Silverado is bullet proof. You’ll have no trouble finishing your trip.

 

Well, they found the issue. It looks like on multiple cylinders (6, and 7) there is no compression. They sent a camera down in there and saw big scrapes on the top of the cylinder head. So a valve spring might have broke or the timing chain slipped. Looks like it is going to take an upper engine rebuild. That sucks. Not sure if it is worth it or what I should do.

 

That does suck. Sorry.

 

Not good. What mileage on your tunny and otherwise in decent shape???

 

Ouch! We went through the same decision when my daughter's Subaru broke a timing belt. It's an individual call, and you have to look at overall mileage, previous reliability of the vehicle, how long you want to drive it, salvage value, cost of replacement, and so on. We ultimately sold her car for $500 to a place that rebuilds Subies and got her a lower mileage care for $3500 (reman engine w/ warranty was $5500 IIRC). Obviously these numbers will be different for your Tundra. I would think it would likely be worth fixing myself.

 

How far from home? I would first try to figure out a way to get it home. This could include variants of Silverado with car hauler trailer, etc. Then I would park it in the driveway until I could gather pricing for the different options to make an informed decision. This assumes the Tundra isn't your only vehicle. Having a major repair done out of town wouldn't be an attractive option for me.

 

I'm wondering if a 2nd opinion is warranted as well.......

 

Sorry to hear about your misfortune. Seems like I’m hearing more and more stories of broken valve springs with our 5.7’s.

 

Where are you located?
How many miles are on the truck?

 

The Tundra has 205k Miles. It has been of average reliability, definitely no where near as reliable as my old 4runner with the 3.4l.

I was about 200 miles from my hometown. Luckily, my brother was able to pull the trailer to the hunting camp with his Silverado VortecMax (I'll never hear the 3nd of this...). The Tundra starts and runs very poorly. He showed me the pictures of the cylinders where you can see the valves hit the top of the piston. The mechanic is located at a large shop in the middle of a small midwestern town. They let us use a loaner car all weekend for free! So that was nice of them, even though it was an old Mercury Marquis lol.

I am going to get it towed by a large car service in the next few weeks. It will only be 150 for a 200 mile ride. Then I'll let it sit in the driveway until I decide what to do with it. The truck is worth around 10k. I imagine a motor rebuild will be 3 to 6k. A used crate engine I around 4k, then 2 to 3 k to install. So I might just drive it into the Ford dealership to trade it in for a diesel F350.

 

Have to admit that F350 is beefy.

 

If it just looks like valve damage then hopefully just the head needs to be rebuilt. If so then trying to sell it outright to someone willing to take a chance might be your best option. I'm not sure if a dealer would even touch it. If they did they wouldn't give you much more than the amount they would knock off the price if you didn't have a trade.

I must be getting old. I can remember when anything over 100k miles was at the point where you either took it easy on a vehicle or just accepted the fact that it could let you down. I have towed my tractor with my '07 with 150k but didn't push it. Of course with the 5.7 you really don't need to push it.

 

I just heard back from the shop.

I have two options:

1. Upper motor rebuild ~$9000

2. Swap in a refurbished 5.7l with around 100k miles ~$9000

Since the truck is only worth $10000, the rear end has been going out for the last 30k miles, and has over 200k miles, I am leaning towards just trading it in or selling it for what I can get out of it. I might be completely debased on this number (I have no idea), but I am hoping out get 4-5k out of it as-is. What do you all think?

 

First off, that sucks dude. I'm sorry.

But......I'm perplexed with calling an engine "refurbished" that has 100k miles on it. It's either rebuilt with 0 miles or it's a used or "take-out" engine.

 

I think it is a used engine. I am pretty sure that I am just going to sell it for what I can, then buy a slightly used truck 3-5 years old.

 

At 200K miles, you've pretty much squeezed out all the "easy money". From here, you'll probably see increasing repair expenses over time. Maybe the differential is the next big expense.

It depends on how much time you want to put into optimizing this decision. Just keep in mind that the shop knows they have you a barrel being broken down on the road. Both of those numbers they gave you sound really high to me, but I'm not involved with it daily. But, getting the truck back home is going to cost something, even if you can work out a deal with the bro. I would probably focus on getting that done if possible, regardless if you sell it "as-is", or try to trade it.

 

I'll give you $3k and pick it up this week if you're within two states of Utah

 

Don't blame ya man. Tough spot to be in.

 

$9000 seems steep for a rebuild.

 

I thought the same.

 

Does anyone know how much the truck might be worth AS-IS. Just a rough estimate. I am either going to sell private party or bring it to a dealership as a trade in or whatever way I get the most money. I figure I could get 4-5k out of it as is. It still runs and drives, albeit poorly, and whoever gets it will have to rebuild the motor.

-205k Miles
-2007 Crewmax Sr5
-otherwise Good Condition

I was looking at craigslist and facebook Marketplace for similar trucks but as you can imagine it is hard to find a Tundra with a blown motor...

 

Looks like you can buy a complete 3UR-FE engine off ebay motors all day long for about $3600-$3700.

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=tundra+5.7+engine&_sacat=6000

I'm thinking a handy guy might like your truck for $4K-$5K if it's worth $10K running. Labor for an engine install depends on how much stuff has to be transferred from old to new engine. Internet sources say $1K-$4K depending; a couple sites said around $2K, one said 15-20 labor manhours.

Personally, I would get some quotes for installation labor. Prepare for soliciting quotes by getting more information on how typical used engines come equipped with accessories; i.e how much extra labor to transfer the old to new, etc. Inquire if you can supply the consumables such as coolant, motor oil, etc.

 

You just got an offer of 3K, I'd take that any day. If you're hunting and living life then squeezing every penny isn't worth the time you'd put into it. Sell it and move on

 

Well, I saved $500, went and towed the truck back to my city. These pictures are from my brother, hence the captions.

Enjoy!