1989

The 3.0 was notorious for blowing head gaskets. For some unknown reason Toyota thought it was a good idea to route the exhaust behind the cylinder head thereby cooking the two back cylinders. The cure is headers. Not cheap but definitely solves the problem. Other than that, it's actually not a bad engine.

 

Oh... I've been through several transmissions and transfer cases! LOL! At it's peak, it was a near 700HP Supercharged Beast. But way too wild to drive, and too many blown up engines, trannys, tranfercases, and rear axles. It is now a 400+HP Chevy406 small block, mated to a Richmond Nascar 5spd w/ reverse, then to a NP205 t-case, ending with a Competition Engineering custom 9"rear with Moser axles, ARB locker, Wilwood discs. I believe it won't break now... So far so good.

 

Awesome!

 

Even when my 3.0L actually ran right(which was rare) it was the most underpowered vehicle I've ever driven aside from an old VW Bug. That 3.0 was too weak for that 4,000 pound 4Runner.

 

This was my 88 with the 3.0L I had a custom true dual exhaust fabricated to fix the blown head gasket syndrome. There is an OEM x-over pipe behind the motor that went right by the head of the motor and the heat was the cause of the majority of blown head gaskets. I had 20k miles on the truck when I modded the exhaust, drove it for 170k and no blown head gaskets.

 

Wow! That is some serious beef! I've had a couple old Chevys with the NP205. It's pretty much unbreakable unless you're putting 1000+ hp thru it. The thing that sucks about that tc, besides being heavy af, is the low range isn't very low. Only 1.96:1 in low range.

 

Yeah, low range isn't that low. But fortunately I was more concerned about going fast than slow!

 

Howdy from DFW and REALLY nice truck