good news she's alive

[orangemica]

Car died last oct, toyota told me its a $10-15,000 rebuild, Took it to another shop,$300,00 later they told me there not qualified to work on it,I had no time no space a needed to get to work so I parked it at a friends house.Bought a new car,last month when it stopped raining changed oil tinkered with the sensor's,afm wasn't being read bye ecu,so I picked up a working unit,still the car ran terrible, flooding the cylinders with fuel,Spent many hours reading the forums trying to make sense why my baby is so sick.from information on the forums I picked up a new ecu,checked the wiring,cleaned grounds, I was on a mission,Yesterday plugged the new ecu in turned the key.....VVVVRRRRMMMM fired right up!!!!! but it made a terrible noise like no oil in the head,we took the valve cover off lots of oil, started it with no valve cover LOTS OF OIL PRESSURE but the noise was still there.Beer break, We put it back together fired her back up, as i was picking up a tool of the ground i noticed the noise got louder.After a quick search we realized it was the alternator, we removed the belt hooked up a booster pack to the battery fired her up no noise and ran smooth as ever! Beer break, we removed the alternator and found it cracked in half and sticking in several spots, its under 2 years old and under warranty.I went from a $10,000 rebuild to $100,00 ecu $40,00 afm, case of beer and patients,thank you all club members for parts and knowledge, she will be on the road soon!!!!!!

[RePete]

Nice to hear, some good detective work on your part. Some pics would be satisfying.

I wouldn't blame 'Toyota' on that crazy quote, I'd blame that particular lazy autotech and his greedy supervisor who approved the quote. Just one or two assholes. That's why it's always good to get a second and even third opinion.

[MRII]

I agree with Pete on this one. Tech did not want to do the job so they (tech, service advisor and the parts dept.) make up a huge number so the customer would either be very stupid to pay for the job or take the car elsewhere.
This what happens when they just want gravy jobs or just work on newerish (<-is this even a word) cars.
Good job on finding out the problem and fixing it for under $200.

[orangemica]

Unfortunately true,toyota did'nt even push the car into the shop,just turned the key couple seconds, blown motor!! they tried to charge me $100 for DIAGNOSTIC but got it waved.Second shop charged me $300 for DIAGNOSTIC but failed to find the noise was coming from the alternator they put in the year before,but agreed to replace the alternator. There's acouple of pics of my engine bay from the PSTOC show last sept on the forum some where, I should have here running and cleaned in acouple weeks

[bbarnumboy]

Awesome work Steve! Bring her down to Washington for a cruise next month.

[sprinterkb]

Great Steve, was this the mk-1 or mk-2 ?