Looking for some help

So I recently did some work on my 95 4runner 3vze I had a coolant leak on the line running to the water pump under the intake I went ahead and replaced it and replaced the gaskets on the intake as they were also leaking and on the plenum when I took it apart there was no hose coming from the pcv valve as I assume the previous owner did some work on it and just left it off is it necessary to have that line I've ran the truck over 6 months and never even noticed. But the real problem is now when I'm driving I'm hearing a rattling noise but only in gear and giving it gas it idles just fine and cruises just fine I've been told it could be my timing belt tensioner or a loose heat shield I'm not driving it until I can get this fixed so any help would be greatly appreciated

 

The air pipe that is between the throttle body and the AFM does have a smaller pipe that is plumbed into the valve cover. Without the PVC the throttle plate is going to get really dirty and choked up with egine blow by. But, so long as the PCV valve is not leaking and is well seated into the gomet then the vent line on the other valve cover will not be seeing any path to the atmosphere. If this is otherwise then the throttle body and the AFM can become pneumatically disconnected from each other and the TPS and the AFM will not be getting signals correctly sent to the ECM. You should expect very rough running and jerky acceleration if this happens. I would be concerned with the other end of the PVC valves plumbing as that vacuum line pipe typically flows into the intake plenum on the PS of the engine. This hose often is one of the first to get really hard and brittle and tends to crack when the plenum is taken off the engine. So that has probably already been the case with your situation and the hose may have been removed by the PO and the port on the plenum has been plugged. If it wasn't the idle would be super high as you would have a very dire intake manifold vacuum leak going on.

Get the head surfaces and intake manifold surfaces nice and clean and apply Halomar (never go hard blue urethane sealant) to the heads and intake manifold gasket areas around were the water galeries are as these tend to weep given enough thermal cycles. Also there is alot going on when you seat the intake manifold into the "V" between the heads. There are a bunch of fasteners that draw the manifold onto the valley and you need to be really careful as you tighten this down and use a torque wrench to evenly draw down the machine screws that secures the manifold to the heads, 15 ft-lbs on all of these, use three steps and the pattern the FSM recommends. If you are replacing the idler pulley that has the water gallery inside the bearing, file the intake manifold flat and lap and hand lap the pulleys casting surface and use Loctite 515 gasket maker and no paper gasket. This will provide a metal to metal joint that doesn't leak and there will be no compression set like you get with a paper gasket. Just make sure the two surfaces are very flat with no bumps or edge burrs being present that might stop the two surfaces from joining together. The four machine screws which secure the pulley to the intake manifold are very close together and mechanically disadvantaged so no more than 15 ft-lbs of torque on those screws as they are threading into aluminum. 242 blue Loctite here is a good idea. For this very reason you need to make darn sure you know how to tension the timing belt correctly which is less of an issue on a 95 as it has a tensioner that is dynamic and not static like it is on the earlier 3VZ-E's. Same treatment for that blasted cast aluminum radiator hose pipe adapter on the other side of the pulley too but those are M4 so like 10 N-m on those two studs. Also I recommend Halomar on the plenum to intake surface and no paper gasket and 15 ft-lbs on the plenum bolts but drawn down like they were head bolts. Again check for burs and edge dings and knock them down with a flat mill bastard file. You can do the same with the Throttle-Body to the Plenum as well.

 

Thank you for your insight I had went ahead and removed my timing belt to check on the tensioner it looks like it's fine but the crankshaft bearing and the PS pully were slightly out of time im thinking when I put that idler pulley back on when reinstalling the intake I must have threw it off I'm thinking that's what was causing the knocking noise when driving I'm just so confused as to why it was not doing it while at idle even when giving it gas I'll take a picture of the pipes coming off the plenum because I have 2 of those lines I cannot find hoses for and also I used a paper gasket on the plenum when I installed it but I'm gonna go ahead and remove it and get some of that halomar you recommend I'm what you call a Google mechanic so slot of this is foreign language to me

 

Here is a nice thing about the 3VZ-E. It is a non interfearance engine which means that you can rotate the crank shaft without the cams turning and you will not bend any of the valves. With that understood the best way to set the timing is to remove the CAM pulleys. Then remove the dowel pins that set the pulley to the cams. Then replace the pully's and line up the timing mark's. With the pulleys able to turn independenty of the cams it make this much easier than trying to fight the valve springs on the cam shafts. Then with the belt in place you can rotate the crank through two complete revolution and see if the Mark's align again as they should. Once that is done remove the loosely set cam pulley bolts and rotate the crank to line up the pulley notch so you can slide the dowels back in.

 

Yea so great news I got it back in time and didn't even have to replace any parts just put it back in time I was a little nervous but I got it back on there lined up all my marks the ran it through about 3 rotations and it stayed perfect put it all back together and ran like a champ unfortunately I but a hole in my radiator while working on it some how so now I've got to replace it, I'm not too upset though because it's so old it needed a new one anyway

 

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