Okay folks, I'm stumped. I'm hoping someone can give me some help on this. Sorry for the length of this post...

Background:

This is on a new 3VZE (88 V6) with about 7,000 miles on it. By new, I mean the block came from Toyota, not rebuilt. I also replaced all the normal stuff (rotor, cap, many hoses, belts, wires) with new Toyota OEM parts. It does have DOA Cams, Downey headers and exhaust, and the DOA turn key heads.

Symptops:

The day after Thanksgiving, I was in Oregon. It was cold outside, snowing the next day. The 4Runner started fine. Fast forward about 2 weeks. I'm at home and notice that the 4Runner doesn't want to start. It turns over strong but won't start unless I put my foot to the floor on the gas pedal, then it starts right up. Shortly thereafter, it wouldn't idle when it was cold. It has since gotten progressively worse.

I took the 4Runner to the dealership and they have refused to help me because I have after market cams. More than likely, they are just too lazy to try to diagnose the problem. They didn't tell me this however, they said that my 4Runner was ready to go and so I picked it up and happily drove back north. Only this time, when it was in the high 30's, it wouldn't start period.

Now, I found out that pulling the 4Runner and popping the clutch will get it running, and then, as long as I let it warm up, it will work okay. I further found that if I let it sit too long and cool down, it'd require another pull start. It did this throughout my trip to the north, and is still doing it back here in California even when it is 50 - 60 degrees outside.

What I've done myself:

I've been working and have had no help with this, but I've done what I can. I pulled a spark plug and it is pretty clean. I left it connected to the plug wire and turned it over and it sparked fine. I've tried to use starting fluid to get it to turn over (did that in OR and WA actually) to no avail. I pulled the cold start injector (mind you I was doing this by myself) and aimed it outisde onto a paper town and turned it over, it quickly soaked the paper towel with gas. I thought for sure it'd be the cold start injector!

So, has anyone had a similar problem? Any help would be greatly apreciated as this is my daily driver.

I had the same symtoms with my 91 4Runner V6 I use to have. I'm not sure what sensor or what the heck it was, but there is a sensor behind the engine with a green connector. I remember there was three sensors back there, just below the intake manifold by the firewall just in front of the windshield. One was brown, one was black and the other was green. I found that the green one was bad and just replaced it with a junkyard one and it started right up just fine. Sorry my explaination is alittle lame but I had almost exactly the same symtoms you did and that green sensor solved it for me :)

Well, to keep folks up to date, I finally got it away from the stealership and took it to someone who knows what they are doing. After trying to start it he thought imediately that it as low compression, and he was right. 75 psi across all the cylinders. He has a theory about this. I think he said the valve seats seated too far down and therefore may be holding the valves open.

Does this sound right? Has anyone had a similar problem?

If this is the case pull a valve cover and check the clearances. They should be tight with NO clearance.

Did you adjust the valves when you did all this work???

I had the work done as I have no place to really work on stuff and am not technically profecient enough to do it.

The guy I had do this could not bring the valves into stock toyota specs. The heads supposedly were adjusted properly, but when he got them, he double checked the work. That is when he found that they weren't right. He called Tim @ doa and Tim said this was normal and that they would be right when they seated.

Well, apparently, after a leak down test, every single one of the exhaust valves are perfectly seated, and every single one of the intake valves is sticking open and is really loose. That is why I've got no compression.

My guy at the shop is waiting to hear back from Tim @ doa for a suggestion. He things there's something wrong with the heads or seats for all of them to be like that. He is willing to readjust the valves (at my cost of course) but doesn't want this to happen again another 7k miles down the road. I don't want to pay for a valve adjustment then a few months later have to have the heads pulled and sent back to Tim.

Has anyone experienced anything like this before? Any suggestions at all?

Something sounds funny. I'd ask Tim if he changed the seats. I don't see any reason he would have unless he went with a larger valve. I've seen soft seats on some older Z heads, they were brass on the intakes though and older Ninja 600's had bad seats, don't know what the problem was with those though.

Replace the Coil if you have not tried that already, I had the exact same problem and I could not figure it out at all. I even had the spark on the plugs with the bad coil. Replaced the coil and had zero problems afterward as far as the starting problems.

Your valve problem is another issue :confused: